The Fire Inside

She always remembers it as fire. That heat behind the breastplate of her armor. The swirling warmth of it, growing there inside her, consuming logic and good manners. Eating away at the expectations of quiet acceptance. “Let me out,” it whispers. “Let me out and everyone will know that you are not weak.”

Someone told her once that it was born out of an ember in times of an inability to take action. Way back in the beginning of her, the feeling of being trapped and unable to control the things happening around her. Somewhere not safe. Somewhere that needed to be forgotten. That ember grew into the fire she now knows as rage.

She’s tried to extinguish it at various points in her life. Tried to bargain with it and smother it with good deeds, thoughts of gratitude and extensions of love into the world. But it is so much a part of her at this point. So long a companion, this burning darkness, a shadow side of herself that aches to be seen. Something deep in the crevices of her soul that rages to live, to grow, to devour the hurt and humiliation of being insignificant.

She wrote a letter ~ My friend, let me sit with you and thank you. Thank you for keeping me company within the long nights and for being my guardian during questionable times. Thank you for protecting me from others and sometimes from myself. You have always been there for me. You have warmed me, held me, helped me run, kept me quiet while I hid from the world. You have given me the words when I’ve needed them and burned my tongue into silence when my well-being depended on it. Thank you for licking my wounds and holding my heart while it bled before me. Thank you for burying the dead. I know that I have ignored you many days and tried to replace you with clean, soft garments. With smiles and sweet voices. I’ve reminded myself over and over that fangs are not for showing and claws are best kept cut to the quick, lest someone notice the dirt underneath them. I’ve opted to be a kinder, gentler human, less fast to snarl, less likely to bite when berated. I’ve contemplated whether there is something wrong with me to allow you to exist, to live inside me like you do, as if I’m a vessel for some hidden darkness. Is it wrong to tend to a fire? Is it bad that my feelings are gone save for the heat of you? I feel unsteady without you, unlike myself and as if my skin doesn’t fit the way that it should. I feel alone and small. Am I going mad because of you? No. You are a part of me. You are me when I need you. Still my companion as much as grace and kindness. I need you when I’ve misplaced my voice and when I feel like I’m swallowing myself. I need you to feed my own agency and to be there to catch me when I’ve found myself in the pit of vipers biting at my flanks. I need you when I’m lost and there is no one else and when the shadows get too thick in my mind. I need you for your unending warmth and for your cold preciseness. I need you for your light and for your consistent dedication to the soul inside me. Thank you for finding me and keeping me whole.

That being done, she walked out into the world with the little dragon inside her, asleep next to her now healed heart.

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