Goodbye to the Zebra | shrikalla's Blog

Before I was a Zebra.
My stripes were my scars that were unhealed from my past.
Although I am good and great and many times more fortunate than most on this planet, I still carry my fair share of bad luck and bad memories.
I didn't realise that I was even a zebra until the night I met a magician.
In my weakest moment, when I would stand but I would not feel the ground beneath me, and when I would laugh but the sound had no meaning and when I was lost amongst all the voices and the crowd, he saw me. And I saw him, but I was so tired of it all and so untrusting, I didn't really see him at all.
He was an angel that came with a difference.
He became everything to me, my lifeline, and I know that I put too much on him and that I was a wild animal at times that he struggled to be close to, and I would lash out because my scars still stung like a thousand bees. He would ask me to trust and I would hear his voice but see all the faces from my past who'd said the same and let me down before.
But inside I knew that he was true and I knew that if only I could do it one more time then I would restore my beautiful self to the being that I was before all the hurt and the heartache.
I was a zebra and I will always know and respect myself for my past, and whoever will judge me can do so after they have walked the same journey in my shoes (or hooves) but I know that I must walk a thousand miles in many others to understand what true pain and hardship really means.
I am scared because now that I have come to face all the darkness inside of me, now all there is is a bright shining light, and sometimes when I look at the ground or hide behind something, I can pretend I'm still in the place that I know, the darkness that I've known for so long, but eventually I have to embrace the light because even though I don't know who I am without the darkness, and I'm scared that the light will singe me and be harsh with my healing heart, I have a saying that I can take with me into the light that the zebra gave me.

Fierce. You are not necessarily born with it. You do not need to have the sharpest teeth, the deadliest bite or the strongest muscles. You only need to have or learn how to be brave in the impossible, because it will hit you with the force of a zebras hooves defending its life against a predator, this is what fierce means to me.......
And with this I have to be brave and embrace the present for what it is and stop living in a world 

Goodbye to the zebra, goobye to the darkness and hello to the new emerging me, for now I am making my life all that I dream it will be, and this year is the year of the raccoon for they are inquisitive, intelligent, social, funny, and I'd be happy to be just like them, and they also have stripes but this is just to remind myself that thought I have moved on, my past has partly made me who I strive to be from now on. 

Happy Year of The Raccoon to you!