The Long Return

I sat in the shadow of the theatre where I once dreamed of who I might become. Years later, I returned, not alone, but with friends who’ve walked the hard road of recovery with me. What once felt like longing now feels like homecoming.

I sit in the shadow of the theatre

that once held my innocence.

The same brick,

the same windows where I once pressed my face,

watching the world move past

as though through a veil of water.

I sold tickets to other people’s stories,

but mine had not yet begun.

On slow afternoons

I leaned into the glass

and asked the questions that have no answers:

Where will I go?

Who will I become?

I felt the wanting,

the waiting,

the gnawing ache of more

without knowing the shape it would take.

I could not have imagined

the mountains and valleys that waited,

how the path would twist downward

into the shadowed country of my own hunger.

The bottle’s voice,

sweet and merciless,

would call me into darkness;

my hands would tremble with the weight of living,

and my breath would catch on the edges of despair.

And yet

there were nights when a hand reached back for me,

when a friend’s voice broke through the silence,

when God’s mercy appeared

in the smallest flicker of light.

There were mornings when I chose again to rise,

to walk the road of mending,

though it burned my feet raw.

The road of recovery is not gentle

it is a crucible,

it is a wilderness,

and it is the only road that saved me.

Today, I sit in the middle of that same plaza

not alone behind glass,

but with friends

pilgrims like me,

scarred and shining,

who have walked their own deserts,

who carry their own holy survival.

We laugh,

we speak truths heavy and simple,

we breathe the same air as if it were communion.

I look back to the window

where my younger self once ached for answers,

and I want to tell her:

the ache will not leave you.

It will take you through fire,

it will split you open,

it will undo you a hundred times,

but it will also lead you here.

The theatre’s shadow falls over us,

not as a prison

but as witness.

It has seen who I was,

and now it sees who I have become.

And in that shadow,

I know this truth:

I would not trade the road,

not the breaking,

not the mending,

not the weight that carved me hollow

so I could be filled with this-

this company of the strong,

this grace we share,

this homecoming at the edge of the past,

in the very place I once longed to escape.

And to you who are still walking,

take heart.

The shadow will not last forever,

the ache is not the end.

There is a table waiting,

and at it,

hands strong enough to carry your story,

hearts brave enough to call you home.