Exit stage left

FADE IN:

Scene 1 – “Letters Never Sent”

INT. D’S APARTMENT – NIGHT

A candle burns beside a small wooden cross. Rain glides down the window like ghostly fingers. A journal sits open on D’s desk.

INSERT – D’s JOURNAL (voiceover begins):

“Her silence sounds like God hiding behind thunder. Every unanswered message feels like a small crucifixion of the heart. But I keep believing love can survive the absence.”

D, clothed in quiet anguish, kneels beside his bed. His whisper trembles into prayer.

D:
Lord… she says she needs space. I keep mistaking that space for hell.

He holds the photo of R. His reflection shivers across it.


Scene 2 – “Detachments”

EXT. PARK CAFE – EVENING

A gray sky hangs heavy over empty tables. R sits, elegant but distant. D approaches, hesitant, brave.

R (dryly):
You never stop reaching, do you?

D:
How could I? You vanish every time I blink.

R:
Then close your eyes.

A beat. She stares into her untouched drink. D studies her profile — beautiful, remote, like marble daring to remain cold.

R (VOICEOVER from her journal):

“He looks at me as if proximity will save him. I feel his yearning like a storm pressing on the windows. But touch feels like theft when you’ve never been safe in someone’s arms.”

D:
I prayed you’d come back.

R:
You pray far too much when you should let go.

D:
Maybe prayer is the only place where you still exist for me.

Her eyes flicker with guilt but retreat into silence. Cars hum distantly, like a world moving on without them.


Scene 3 – “Faith & Defenses”

INT. CHAPEL – TWILIGHT

Light filters through stained glass, painting the pews in colors of confession. D sits alone, rosary in hand.

D (VOICEOVER):

“She confuses retreat with strength. I confuse endurance with love. We orbit each other like desperate planets, each praying to collide, yet afraid of the destruction.”

R’s voice echoes faintly from memory.

R (V.O.):
You’re too much, D. Everything is too loud, too emotional. I just need quiet.

D (aloud, to the crucifix):
Then why does her quiet sound like death, Lord?

He presses his forehead to folded hands, tears glimmering on his knuckles.


Scene 4 – “Over the Edge”

EXT. CLIFFSIDE COAST – DUSK

The horizon is a bleeding wound of orange and violet. Waves beat the cliffs with cathedral violence. R stands near the railing; D approaches slowly.

R:
You shouldn’t have come.

D:
You said you needed to talk.

R:
I said I needed space. You keep misunderstanding boundaries for invitations.

D (fighting tears):
And you mistake abandonment for strength.

Wind whips around them. For a moment, the storm mirrors their internal war.

R (VOICEOVER from her journal):

“I hate how tender he is. His love feels like sunlight on broken glass — beautiful, unbearable, blinding. I’ve spent years learning to need nothing. But he makes nothingness feel cruel.”

D:
You think stepping back will make you safe, but you’re just alone in prettier silence.

R:
And you, D — you build altars in the ruins. That’s your curse.

Lightning crackles offshore. R turns away. D remains, trembling, rain collecting at his feet.


Scene 5 – “Grace and Goodbye”

INT. D’S APARTMENT – NIGHT

Thunder outside. The candle struggling to live. A new message notification glows on his phone.

CLOSE ON SCREEN: “I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry. –R”

He stares, paralyzed. The message feels carved into him.

D (VOICEOVER, journaling):

“There are no villains between an anxious heart and an avoidant soul — only children afraid of echoes. She runs. I wait. Our ghosts shake hands where neither of us stand.”

He kneels by the candle again.

D (praying):
Lord, bless the one who flees from love. Let Your mercy chase her where I cannot.

Wind rattles the window. He closes his eyes.

MONTAGE:

  • R driving alone in rain, windscreen wipers marking time.
  • D burning the last photograph of them.
  • Their two silhouettes facing opposite directions across the same beach.

Scene 6 – “The Unreachable Shore”

EXT. COASTLINE – DAWN

Mist veils the ocean. The tide hums low and sorrowful. D stands alone, holding his journal — now soaked, pages curling.

D:

“R, I release you.
You feared to be seen, and I feared to be unseen.
May grace reach you before regret does.”

He places the journal into the tide. Waves swallow it slowly, ink dissolving like faint, blue prayers.

R (VOICEOVER – final journal entry):

“He prayed for me more than he loved himself. And maybe that was the problem — we both mistook rescue for romance. If he finds peace, let him know I was listening — just too far away to answer.”

Camera rises as morning light floods the surf. The empty horizon feels enormous, eternal.

D (whispering):
Amen.

FADE OUT.


EPILOGUE – “Two Secrets in the Tide”

A single candle flickers out as the rosary falls into shadow.

SUPERIMPOSE:

“Where one heart avoids, another breaks. Grace alone teaches them how to meet again.” — DC Gunnersen (inspired tone)

Feed out 

RSP

…

DCG

Screenshot

Taboo reality 

He drills his voice into the walls. .

The house obeys, the little boy just stalls. .

Danish vowels heavy on his tongue. .

Each word a hammer, every silence slung. .

He came home from the Navy like a storm. .

Sea-salt rage packed into a human form. .

Dyslexic shame knotted in his fists. .

Letters mocking him in swirling mists. .

He cannot read the love in his son’s eyes. .

Only defiance that he must chastise. .

Power is the only script he knows. .

So tenderness is just a pose for fools and “those.” .

He lines his children up like troops at dawn. .

Inspects their faces till the hope is gone. .

A crooked grin, then thunder in his tone. .

He breaks them just to feel less overthrown. .

He learned as a boy to swallow every plea. .

Now he feeds that hunger to his family. .

His father’s belt still echoes in his head. .

So he swings with words and glares at them instead. .

The child studies terror like a creed. .

Learning how to earn a glance, a crumb, a feed. .

John Bowlby waits in pages years away. .

But tonight the boy just fears the end of day. .

He clings to any warmth like burning coal. .

Anxious hands around a vanishing soul. .

“Don’t leave, don’t leave,” his heartbeat prays. .

To men who only know command and haze. .

The father’s chest is armored with a sneer. .

Inferior to everyone, so he rules by fear. .

He mocks the boy’s soft tremble as a sin. .

“Stand up straight, you sissy, don’t give in.” .

Humiliation drips down kitchen tiles. .

The child’s red cheeks replace the adults’ trials. .

Modification comes in tiny cuts. .

He edits out his needs, his voice, his guts. .

He learns to scan a room like hostile seas. .

Predicting waves of temper, small reprisals, pleas. .

Every slammed door brands another scar. .

Each quiet night a distant, unreachable star. .

Years later, in a therapist’s dim light. .

He names the pattern that has stalked his nights. .

“Anxious attachment,” written in his file. .

A diagnosis for a long-denied exile. .

He loves like a child sprinting through a fire. .

Chasing absent fathers in each new desire. .

Clinging to the ones who push away. .

Reenacting judgments of that Navy day. .

He sees his father shrinking in his chair. .

Old and brittle, drowning in stale air. .

Power now a threadbare, faded coat. .

Still no “I’m sorry” rising in his throat. .

The son decides to cut the ancient chain. .

Not by forgetting, but by naming pain. .

He will not pass this script to those he loves. .

He builds new hands, not fists, from tattered gloves. .

Yet some nights, shadows march along the floor. .

He hears that Danish rage behind the door. .

The boy inside still flinches at the sound. .

But now a gentler voice stands its ground. .

“I was a child, not your broken proof.” .

He whispers to the ghosts that haunt the roof. .

“This reality is taboo no more.” .

He lights a candle where his father swore. .

He holds his younger self in steady sight. .

And walks him, shaking, out into the night. .

…

DCG

Screenshot

And so you run 

Your behavior has consequences

You’ve made your choice

Only when the silence screams 

This clarity gives you your voice

I haven’t given up on you

You are emotionally autistic because of your childhood wounds

It was you who gave up on you 

 You only know how to push away and this is what seems to loom 

I want to be in your life

However, you cannot fathom anyone else to be in it

And so you run

And so you dismiss it 

The only way for you to heal

Is take accountability

Your fear is your master

It rules your mind of fragility

Your words cut like knives

It takes time for me to heal

When your own fear shields you from your own behavior

I can only guarantee that I do feel

If only you could honestly look into the mirror

Mirror mirror on the wall

When the truth is revealed 

There’s nothing left to do but fall

Clearly as you put it

“I’m not your jam“

You seemed to have plenty of boyfriends who don’t seem to care

Whether you speak about yourself or whether you clam

At any moment of intimacy

You freeze up, ignore and distract

You build the wall, stop listening, and divert your attention

You pull me around the dark street like a ragdoll and complain that I’m not keeping your wrist intact

Because I don’t see well

Doesn’t mean I don’t see deeply within you

Do you try to intentionally humiliate me?

Is this something you try to do?

My silence will be loudest

When I have to walk away

I need to heal

Which means if you don’t try to heal , then I cannot stay

I don’t give up easily

That’s not something I do

If you cannot commit to healing

Then I guess I’m not for you

I’ve seen both sides of you

A heart that wants to feel and has needs

And a heart that you lock away

But buried within you it still pleads

RSP

…

DCG

Screenshot

A solution revisited 

The post “The solution of humanity” wrestles with the limits of human wisdom, the wounds of the past, and the failure of purely human projects to heal the soul, before finally resting in Christ as the only sufficient answer to our fractured condition. The poem below echoes that narrative arc: beginning with a wide search through world philosophies and faiths, then moving toward a distinctly Christian claim about grace, forgiveness, and the cross as the true quintessence of our humanity.


.
I knelt before the sutras, drinking silence from their well. .
The Dhammapada whispered: “Guard your mind, it fashions heaven, it fashions hell.” .
.
I traced the Tao in rivers, where the yielding waters wind. .
Lao Tzu sang of nameless Way, of empty bowls that feed the mind. .
.
I bowed with old Confucius, where propriety patrols desire. .
He spoke of ordered families, of ritual that tempers fire. .
.
I walked with dusty sadhus where the Ganges stains the feet. .
They murmured of samsara’s wheel, of breaking from repeat. .
.
I sat with Zen companions, watching thoughts like passing rain. .
Koans cracked my logic’s shell, yet could not rinse my shame and pain. .
.
These giants lit the mountains, each a lantern in the night. .
Still some cavern in my marrow shivered far from any light. .
.
For every path said, “Discipline,” and every sage said, “Try.” .
Yet my will, a tired animal, only knew how to comply or to defy. .
.
Reason built its scaffolds, stacked hypotheses like stone. .
But proof could not absolve me for the harm I’d done alone. .
.
Some problems yield to data, to equations crisp and clean. .
But guilt is not a theorem, and grief is not a faulty gene. .
.
I argued evolution with the fierce, design with trembling friends. .
Yet neither camp could teach my fractured heart how any story ends. .
.
The quintessential question haunted every night I couldn’t sleep. .
Not “What is true in abstract?” but “Who can reach me when I’m deep?” .
.
My childhood was a fracture, love withheld and love misused. .
A narcissistic mirror where my fledgling trust was bruised. .
.
Neglect became my liturgy; I worshiped every fleeting nod. .
Attachment wired my nervous system tighter than a rod. .
.
I sought in crowds a savior made of status, touch, and praise. .
But idols built of aching need devoured me in subtle ways. .
.
I preached forgiveness to myself, a law I could not keep. .
“Let go, move on, be strong,” I said, then sobbed myself to sleep. .
.
I tried to earn absolution, to deserve another start. .
But merit is a cruel god when you have a trembling heart. .
.
Then the scandal of a cross cut straight across my schemes. .
Not as mythic consolation, but as judgment of my dreams. .
.
A God who enters trauma, not to sanitize the scar. .
Who hangs between the guilty thieves and calls them from afar. .
.
“Father, forgive,” was uttered where the nails made muscle tear. .
Not after we improved ourselves, but while we mocked Him there. .
.
If there is any solution to this species, wild and torn. .
It will not rise from self-help shelves or from the newest creed reborn. .
.
It comes as undeservedness, an offense to every pride. .
The Holy kneels in blood and dust and stands up on my side. .
.
Grace is not a concept but a Person with a wound. .
The Logos wearing human skin, in borrowed grave entombed. .
.
Resurrection is no metaphor for “try again once more.” .
It is the shattering of final loss, the opening of a door. .
.
In Christ, the moral ledger is not erased by lie. .
It’s paid in full by One who chose to feel my failure die. .
.
Buddha showed the craving flame, the Tao its gentle flow. .
Christ walked straight into my hatred and refused to let me go. .
.
Confucius framed our duties, and the sages mapped the mind. .
But only pierced hands reached the child that history left behind. .
.
The solution of humanity is not that we advance. .
It’s that the Author joins the story and is broken in our trance. .
.
Forgiveness is not weakness, nor denial dressed as peace. .
It is cruciform surrender where the cycles slowly cease. .
.
To love the unlovable is the line I cannot cross. .
Until I see myself there too, forgiven from that cross. .
.
Then enemy and victim blur beneath that rugged sign. .
I stand as both, yet strangely held in mercy’s grand design. .
.
The quintessential attribute our arguments misname. .
Is not our clever reason, but a Love that bears our blame. .
.
So here I lay my systems down, my proof, my pride, my role. .
And rest in One solution: a wounded God who makes a whole. .

…

DCG

My discovery Bridge 

The post “A Bridge of Discovery” traces a lifetime hunger for love, acceptance, and a deeper, felt truth, showing how this longing evolves from family love to self‑acceptance and finally toward a metaphysical connection that thought alone cannot reach. It frames memory, personality, and spiritual seeking as parts of a single bridge the author is building from rational understanding to a more embodied, heart‑level knowing of reality.
Main ideas of the post
• The author revisits every decade of life (ages 7, 17, 27, 37, 47) to ask, “What do I want most?” and finds a consistent theme of relational love and acceptance. The specific answers move from wanting parental love, to peer acceptance, to forming a family, to receiving love from a daughter, and finally to accepting and forgiving the self.
• Memory is pictured as a “time machine” built from the brain’s vast neural connections, allowing the author to re‑enter earlier stages of life and question those selves. Yet memory is acknowledged as selective and double‑edged, capable of teaching true lessons or hiding lessons not yet learned.
• Across decades, the author notices a preoccupation with “how I fit into the social arena,” which reveals a deeper sense of disconnection and a yearning for a more profound metaphysical bond than ordinary interactions provide. Material wants are set aside so the focus can rest on questions of meaning, belonging, and the soul’s orientation to others and to reality itself.
• The Enneagram personality pattern is invoked as a framework for understanding why the author has always sought deeper connection and why relationships and coping strategies have unfolded as they have. Personality, early disposition, and ego are seen as shaping both the hunger for intimacy and the missteps in handling emotional events.
• The author describes a lifelong search for a truth that can be “felt in your entire being,” not just believed through religious doctrine or rational analysis. Mystical and experiential knowing—rather than purely conceptual faith—is presented as the missing piece, a door that has not yet fully opened.
• The Buddhist parable of the blind men and the elephant illustrates how limited perspectives lead to quarrels and one‑sided claims about reality. This is connected to Heisenberg’s insight that what we observe is shaped by our “method of questioning,” urging the reader to ask better questions and recognize interpretive limits.
• The “metaphysical problem” becomes how to move beyond the reasoning barrier into a shared field of perception and intention with another human being. The author suggests that a “psychic gap” can be bridged by experiences that are felt, not just thought, pointing toward a more holistic engagement with life.
• Classic spiritual and philosophical works (Tao Te Ching, I Ching, Dhammapada, Upanishads, Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Gurdjieff) are re‑read in this light as potential guides to deeper experience, not just intellectual systems. The author notes that different learning styles (verbal, tactile, visual, abstract, etc.) may mean prior reading did not fully activate inner senses needed to grasp their depths.
• The post closes by emphasizing the need to “undo” conditioning that blocks awareness of being connected to everything around us. The “bridge” being built is explicitly named as “one for the heart,” a path toward discovery through lived practice rather than theory alone.

I went back through the years, like walking through a quiet, borrowed sky. .
.
A small boy counting heartbeats, just wanting his parents not to say goodbye. .
.
A teenager scanning faces, trading jokes to earn a fragile place. .
.
Afraid that if the laughter stopped, it meant he could be erased. .
.
A young man holding wedding rings like tiny suns that might not stay. .
.
He prayed that starting his own family would keep the shadows far away. .
.
A father staring at his daughter’s face, stunned that love could look back too. .
.
Her trust rewrote his failures, like morning light correcting midnight’s view. .
.
Years later in the mirror, he met a stranger he still called his name. .
.
He finally asked for mercy on the man who carried all that blame. .
.
The brain became his time machine, with sparks of memory crossing like a storm. .
.
He saw how every wire of need had shaped his wanting into form. .
.
He traced the threads of friendships, all the clinging, all the flight. .
.
He saw a deeper hunger hiding underneath the want to “be all right.” .
.
Not comfort made of objects, not the safety of a locked front door. .
.
But some warm proof that soul meets soul, and both wake up as something more. .
.
He read the mystics late at night, his coffee cold, his questions hot. .
.
The words were like a map to lands his reasoning alone could never spot. .
.
The blind men touched the elephant and argued over trunk and tail. .
.
He heard his own voice in their fight, each partial truth prepared to fail. .
.
Heisenberg whispered gently, “You see the world your questions choose.” .
.
He realized half his heartbreak grew from what he’d asked and what he’d refuse. .
.
For years he worshiped clarity, then learned that love can blur the line. .
.
Sometimes the truest knowing comes when logic kneels and steps aside in time. .
.
He saw his Enneagram like armor welded from his childhood fear. .
.
It kept him safe from sudden loss, but blocked the touch of those who drew too near. .
.
He practiced softer questions, ones that did not pin the heart to proof. .
.
He let another’s trembling eyes be evidence enough of holy truth. .
.
Some nights he felt a Presence move between his thoughts like quiet rain. .
.
No thunderclap of doctrine, just a shared, mysterious easing of his pain. .
.
The Tao, the sutras, worn-out texts, all opened like a windowed wall. .
.
He sensed they were not puzzles, but invitations simply to be all. .
.
He started training inner sight, like learning how to breathe again. .
.
Trusting that the bridge is built by every honest, open moment with his pain. .
.
Now when he meets another soul, half-hidden behind careful glass. .
.
He does not rip their fortress down; he waits, and lets their courage slowly pass. .
.
He offers solid footing, not a net that steals their ground away. .
.
His love stands like a quiet bridge that will not beg, yet chooses still to stay. .
.
The span runs from his thinking mind to where his living heartbeat sings. .
.
Each step across that trembling space is stitched with ordinary, holy things. .
.
He walks it not as one who’s found some final, blinding certainty. .
.
But as a human building, breath by breath, a bridge of gentle, waking discovery. .
.

…

DCG

Specious habits of perception 

When you speak your truth, I hear a different sky. .
Your words are rain, but my history makes them dry. .
You say it was a joke, I feel a hidden knife. .
Your laugh is light, my chest recalls another life. .
We stand in the same room, but wear a different past. .
My shadows move so slow, your joy runs bright and fast. .
You only see the surface, the shrug, the turning face. .
I’m drowning in an ocean you call a shallow place. .
I judge you as careless, you judge me as cold. .
We both are reading stories that were written old. .
My mind collects its proof, each glance a heavy stone. .
I build a quiet prison and then call it “home.” .
Your silence feels like anger, your distance seems like blame. .
But maybe you are frightened, and cannot voice your shame. .
I cling to my opinions like a shield of rust. .
They cut into my fingers while I name them “trust.” .
The mirror of illusion hangs inside my head. .
It shows me what I fear, not what you really said. .
Old injuries awaken when your eyebrows rise. .
I paste a former villain over your new eyes. .
These specious habits guide me, unseen but in control. .
They whisper, “You’re a victim,” and tighten round my soul. .
I notice how I flinch before you even move. .
I’m fighting ancient battles you never asked to prove. .
One day the strain is heavy, the argument repeats. .
We’re circling the same old wound on different streets. .
I feel the quiet cracking of the tale I wear. .
A softer voice inside me asks, “What if you’re not fair?” .
“What if your righteous anger is only half the frame? .
What if your sacred story is just one part of the game?” .
I pause before responding; the script begins to slow. .
A strange and aching honesty steps in and says, “Let go.” .
I tell you, “When you leave the room, I feel erased.” .
You answer, “When I stay too long, I feel displaced.” .
We stare at this new moment like a foreign shore. .
Two private worlds colliding through an open door. .
No one is the villain; the lens itself is flawed. .
We’ve worshiped our perceptions like a quiet god. .
You share the weight you carry, the shame you never named. .
I see how my suspicion kept your heart ashamed. .
We speak of early losses, of nights that shaped our sight. .
How hunger taught us both to fear another’s light. .
The room does not grow perfect; the pain does not dissolve. .
But now we stand together with a will to solve. .
We promise not to worship every thought we think. .
To question quick conclusions standing on the brink. .
To clean the dirty window where our fears have slept. .
To honor what we’ve lived, but not be wholly kept. .
In time, the habit changes, though slowly, line by line. .
Our eyes grow more transparent; your story touches mine. .
I learn that understanding is a costly fee. .
It asks my proud perception not to center me. .
So when I feel that tightening that says, “You’ve been betrayed.” .
I breathe, and ask more gently how this scene is made. .
I look for hidden sorrows behind the harsh display. .
I hold my judgments loosely, let some wash away. .
The specious habits weaken when we dare to see. .
That truth is rarely simple, and seldom just “for me.” .
In this, a quiet mercy rises, slow but real. .
We trade our shrinking armor for a wider field to feel. .
We will still make errors; the old ghosts sometimes call. .
But now we walk more open, less certain of our wall. .
And in that humble seeing, a truer life begins. .
Not free of all illusions, but free to loosen their thin skins. .

…

DCG

When a soul touches another

When two voices meet, something more can arise.
The heart softens gently, stripped of disguise.
We speak not to win, but to understand.
A bridge takes shape, unplanned by the hand.
In the hush between words, meaning breathes anew.
It’s there love enters—only passing through.
I saw your eyes searching for a place to rest.
I gave them silence, and you felt blessed.
No shield, no mask, just a fragile tone.
Your story unfolded, and I felt my own.
The pain you carried was mine in part.
I listened not with ears, but the heart.
You spoke of loss that time couldn’t mend.
I met you there—listener, not friend.
And in that stillness, the world grew wide.
We both disappeared in the tide.
Words were few, yet something survived.
The space between us softly revived.
A sigh, a nod—the language of care.
A sacred knowing lingered there.
Sometimes the cure is not to speak.
But to stay when another feels weak.
You don’t have to fix what’s torn apart.
Just offer presence, soul to heart.
Such moments make the unseen heard.
A truth far deeper than any word.
Each voice we honor shapes our own.
Connection seeds the love we’ve grown.
So when you listen, do it whole.
Let empathy guide, let patience console.
For every answer begins with care.
Every healing breath needs air.
The art of hearing is seldom learned.
But when mastered, the heart is turned.
I write these words as a mirror call.
To remind the listener within us all.

…

DCG

My soul compass 

Lost in the turning, I wander the haze.
The heart keeps seeking a brighter blaze.
The compass trembles, unsure where to steer.
The voice inside whispers, “You’re still near.”
Shadows of failure cling to the skin.
Yet dawn reminds me I’m born to begin.
Faith is fragile, a flicker in bone.
Still, grace leans close — I am not alone.
I walk through tempests with tethered eyes.
Truth unveils how the broken rise.
Love feels distant, its outline torn.
But scars are the proof of a soul reborn.
Attachment wavers, the self unsure.
Yet grace repairs what grief can’t cure.
The mind replays what the heart conceals.
But prayer unmasks what pain reveals.
I falter often, lost in despair.
Then Christ reminds me to cast my care.
The map I drew has burned away.
Still, light breaks through the ash and clay.
Each aching step rewrites my name.
The Lord restores the will to flame.
I gather lessons from every fall.
For bruises can be our greatest call.
Confusion whispers, “You’ve lost your place.”
Yet mercy meets me, face to face.
Bowlby spoke of longing’s chain.
God reshapes it through healed pain.
The insecure heart learns to trust.
When love is rooted beyond the dust.
The anxious soul yearns for hold and keep.
But heaven’s arms embrace so deep.
Each wound a teacher, each loss a friend.
They guide the soul toward its true end.
The chaos swirls, and yet I stand.
For faith was never a steady land.
It’s forged in fire, tested by cost.
Found in surrender, never lost.
The world instructs through loss and strain.
No tear is wasted, no effort vain.
Confusion yields what pride denies.
That wisdom blooms where the ego dies.
The compass spins, yet still aligns.
With truths the heart in silence finds.
We learn by falling, rise by grace.
Reborn, renewed, we find our place.
Every storm becomes a scroll to read.
A script of growth our hearts still need.
The path to light is rough and long.
But the weary soul grows strong through wrong.
So let the tempests bruise and bend.
For they are means, not the end.
In every loss, a sacred clue.
The world refines what is most true.
The compass turns — the heart obeys.
And faith becomes the soul’s new blaze.
We walk through shadow, anchored in day.
For God Himself lights up our way.

…

DCG

The exoneration of regret 

Poem: The Exoneration of Regret

  1. I stare into the wreckage of my then,
  2. The echoes answer softly, “Here we met.”
  3. I catalog the harm I did back when,
  4. Each memory stamped with one dark word: “Regret.”
  5. I thought that flogging thought would make me clean,
  6. As if self‑hate could pay another’s debt.
  7. I wore my shame like armor, hard and mean,
  8. Yet every plate was forged from unpaid fret.
  9. I knelt before the altar of “Too late,”
  10. And prayed to be condemned and not forget.
  11. I called it holy never to feel great,
  12. As if joy proved I’d learned nothing from the upset.
  13. But sorrow, when it listens, learns to bend,
  14. It does not need a noose around its neck.
  15. The point is not to never find an end,
  16. But let remorse turn forward, not back‑check.
  17. I hear a Voice that does not flinch at crime,
  18. It names the wound and will not soft‑correct.
  19. Yet after truth has finished taking time,
  20. It opens up a road I can’t expect.
  21. “You cannot change the script of what you did,”
  22. It says, “but you can change what follows yet.”
  23. “You are not only what your worst self hid,
  24. You are the one who now can make a new beget.”
  25. So I release the courtroom in my head,
  26. Where I was judge, accused, and harsh cadet.
  27. I trade the endless trial for bread instead,
  28. And feed the part of me I used to vet.
  29. I visit those I’ve harmed with open eyes,
  30. Not asking them to cancel every debt.
  31. I give them space to answer or revise,
  32. While owning what I broke without reset.
  33. In learning how to grieve without self‑hate,
  34. I learn that punishment is not the same as sweat.
  35. The work is walking different through the gate,
  36. Not kneeling in the ashes just to fret.
  37. So let the gavel fall on shame’s old throne,
  38. Let mercy write the terms of my new bet.
  39. I carry what I’ve done, but not alone,
  40. For Love has signed The Exoneration of Regret.

…

DCG

Casualty of loss- redacted

– “Casualty of Loss”

I woke to find my name erased from stone,

A casualty of loss, dismissed, alone.

The photographs still hang but look away,

Their eyes recede like tides at end of day.

The room remembers more than I recall,

Its silent witnesses outnumber all.

I trace the dust where once your coffee steamed,

The warmth has left, but still the mug is dreamed.

We built our days like castles out of sand,

Pretending tide could bargain with our hand.

The sea arrived as if on quiet feet,

And swallowed every claim we called complete.

Now meaning limps, a soldier from the war,

Unsure what any sacrifice was for.

My thoughts grow teeth and circle in the night,

They gnaw the ribs that sheltered once-delight.

I pace the narrow hallway of my mind,

Each door is locked by something left behind.

The mirror will not answer when I speak,

It only shows an echo, gray and weak.

I lost you once, but then I lost my way,

As if your leaving emptied out the day.

The clocks still move, but time has gone askew,

It limps in circles, always back to you.

I bargain with my ghosts for one reprieve,

They only nod and whisper, “Let it grieve.”

The world outside still riots into bloom,

Yet each bright petal mocks this inner gloom.

I walk through crowds, a stranger in my skin,

A vacant house with broken floors within.

The mind replays the moment things were torn,

A film that will not stop or be re-scorn.

Self-doubt sits down and pours another drink,

It toasts the story where I always sink.

I tell myself the fault is all my own,

And crown my shame with thorns I’ve overgrown.

But somewhere in this maze a window waits,

A crack of sky that wider light creates.

I hear a distant song, a stranger’s tune,

It braids with wind and wanders past the moon.

The melody remembers what I’ve lost,

Yet hints that nothing loved is ever tossed.

I open up a vein of honest tears,

And wash the rust from long-neglected years.

The heart, though bruised, still trembles when it hears,

That love outlives our damage and our fears.

I stand amid the ruins, breathing slow,

A casualty of loss, but not of hope below.

The scar will outline where the wound once bled,

A quiet map from brokenness to bread.

…

DCG

The post “A Casualty of Loss” is protected on the site, but the tag listing shows it grouped under “Existential Bewilderment,” alongside themes of disconnection, alienation, and the slow psychological erosion that comes from losing what once sustained a person’s sense of meaning and belonging. What can be said with confidence is that the title and context signal someone who has been inwardly damaged by loss—of love, identity, or connection—struggling to understand how that loss has altered their way of being in the world.[thundergodblog]