When You Survive This…
When you survive this —
when, I say, not if.
When you survive this
night of darkened grip.
When you survive this,
clenching dimmest light,
your brightened spark
of hope ignites
others’ will to fight.
Though you wish you hadn’t scaled
a painful path so grim,
as warm dawn chases chill away,
I feel you take my hand.
We stand upon a sunlit ridge.
I hear your whispered wish:
“Today, this moment —
now, with you —
I’m glad I’m here for this.”
Author’s Notes:
I’ve fought intense battles of severe depression at times, on the precipice of unaliving myself.
Only those who have crawled that darkness know the terrible tension of clinging so tentatively to the thinnest glimmers of hope. Inevitably, the unbearable night passes and the light lost as impossible makes me grateful I stayed another day.
Even if the brighter moments aren’t as often as I’d like, I cling to those times when I have said, “Yes, I’m glad I’m here for this.”
The semicolon has become a symbol for suicide survivors. It’s an unusual pause where the author could have chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to.
Believe that the sun will rise again.