She Is The Sun..

I was a little girl, with bright blooming red rosy cheeks and hair scraped back into wild long plaits when someone once told me that even your own shadow will leave you when your life becomes dark. I looked up momentarily; not fully comprehending the true meaning or weight behind their solemn words. Instead, I simply shrugged off what they had foretold me. Why would a girl so young and carefree stop for more than a mere moment to delve into those heavy words that had just been spoken to her?

However, as the years flew by and people came and went, leaving tear stained shapes of regret and loss. Gentle naivety succumbed into a thing of the long-distance past and in its place something much crueller was forged from the broken ashes. Staring into the gaping black mouth of the empty abyss that surrounded me; I painstakingly realised that my life had been cut into total darkness. The very path that I wearingly trod upon had now become deserted and bare as I struggled to find another living, breathing soul on my increasingly winding path.

All had left except one.

There she was waiting for me. Meeting me in the middle. My mother, whom twenty-three years ago breathed the precious gift of life into my soul. How had I not realised that she had been there all this time, right by my side; taking on my pain as if it was her own, even though it wasn’t her burden to bear. Her loyalty to her ill daughter remained throughout, not once faltering or weakening. Every gruelling day and never-ending night she was there, wrapping me in her strong and loving arms. My only crack of light warming me through. Keeping me alive.

When days of reflection come washing over me and days of the past sound like the ocean roaring inside my head. I come to the gut-wrenching guilty realisation that I was simply too selfish to realise exactly what it was my mother was sacrificing for me.

Her life, in order to save mine.

‘Definition of sacrifice (verb) to give up something that is valuable to you in order to help another person.’

All this time, she had been carrying my darkness around with her too, my pain became hers. She simply allowed it to devour her first instead of me, taking on the worse of it. Slowly it crept into her life, diluting the light. Poisonous vines began entering through the cracks in our house, entombing us both. The windows gathered thick mountains of dust and grime until we could no longer see the world outside.

When it came to that desolate day, when my body and mind surrendered, and I was truly led astray in my own madness. Silent tears seared the sides of my hollow face; the darkness crushing me in it’s unrelenting grip, as I slipped away into the shadows.

Defeat was written in the cards, it rang through like church bells, celebrating in what it had managed to take. I was the prize. That’s when my mother stepped forward again with everything ounce of inner strength that she held within her and carried us both. I was a dead weight in her arms, lost in a dark place where she didn’t know how to reach out to me. I was making her sink with every footstep she dared take, yet she continued. Without complaint, without hesitation, without ever asking for help, from anybody. She simply looked down at me and whispered, “together we will find the light.”

That wholehearted love she implanted inside me, is something so truly pure that no one can ever begin to touch in on it. It is ours and ours alone and we will carry it through our lives. It is something we can never lose. It is a love so high and selfless, that its very existence is miraculous in nature. Therefore, this is why my mother is and will always continue to be my biggest inspiration. When the darkness eclipsed us both, when everyone else had turned their faces away, she held on even tighter.

Shoulders drawn back, head held high, she battled the storm littered with demons and a darkness so terrifying I don’t think I’ll ever truly begin to be able to put it into words. Like a story book heroine come to life, springing from the paper pages of the books that I used to read by torch light and right in front of my very eyes. I have never looked upon someone so brave and fearless before. You set the bar for what all mothers should aspire to be to their children.

Thank you, mum from the bottom of my heart for saving me, and along the way putting in the measures so that I could start saving myself. A gift that one day I can pass onto my own children if their light ever begins to flicker.

P.S. when we reach those days when the monsters rear their ugly heads to check if our renowned strength has begun to falter, I love how we disappoint them every time.