I came home. It ended. Stripped and peeled, cracked and dry, my feet landed on familiar ground. All the color was still there. The faces I wanted to kiss and hold were there. We smiled at each other. We laughed and sighed. But I was nervous. When the faces looked at me I was afraid they would see evidence of how stripped I had become. I did what I could to disguise myself. I tried to adorn myself with the few pieces of color I was able to bring from the other world. I cut my long hair, bought clothes that weren't stained and faded, tried to erase any physical signs of how I felt inside. But I was just a skeleton with new clothes and a new hair cut. And in the end, after all that effort, I think my face betrayed me anyway. I wore and still wear scars and cracks on my face - evidences of trauma. Because the truth is that the damage was done. And being back on solid ground with the people I belong to didn't reverse the process I had been through.

I walked from person to person and felt a disturbing lack of joy. I looked hard at my home and at my friends. But I felt numb, and hard no matter what I did.

And just when I thought I would never feel alive or whole or healthy ever again, I cried. I was at my parents' house. It was sunset. The fall air was crisp and cool. The red and orange leaves shivered in the breeze as it threatened to blow them to their death. Without any particular thought in my head I walked outside behind the barn. I stood and watched the horizon spin away from the sun. I laid down on the ground and felt sweet gravity holding me down, heavy on the cold grass. And I cried. I didn't know why, and I didn't try to figure it out. I just cried. As gravity pulled me and my tears deeper into the ground, I looked up at the dimming sky and realized that those tears proved something. I wasn't dried up. I had living proof rolling into my hair and onto the grass that I was not dead. I closed my eyes tight and prayed that my tears would soak into my soul - that my soul would drink and drink and drink until it was no longer thirsty. And when I stood up, the earth had spun out of the sun's reach. I was alone again under emerging stars. I looked up and knew that gravity would hold me. And I knew that it was going to be possible to feel alive again.