Reflections

By Patricia A. Wight

Reflections is a tender approach to the various difficulties encountered by many people during the course of their lives. Reflections has been written with a view of helping and guiding people suffering with, inter alia, the pain of drug and alcohol addiction, sexual abuse, an abusive parent or partner, and suicide. Reflections approaches each subject in a personal and spiritual manner that is conducted between the reader and the author. Reflections contains a collection of poetry, written by the author, in respect to the various topics raised in the book and of which the author has personal experience. Through the channel of Reflections, the author hopes to reach out and help as many people as possible in achieving their full potential and overcoming the grief and pain labouring their hearts, minds, and souls and causing them to stagnate or regress.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Sep 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479711826

Patricia A. Wight

Patricia Wight is a freelance writer and poet. Patricia has been writing for over twenty years and has had several publications of articles in newspapers and a poem, Clouds, published in the Bleksem Literary Journal. Patricia next hopes to publish an anthology of poetry, which she has written over the past twenty years. She is a member of the National Association for Literature Development and feels passionately about the art of literature. Patricia was born and has lived most of her life inDurban,South Africa, where she lives with her husband and two daughters. Because of Patricias history, she has strong feelings about women and child abuse, from which much of her inspiration is derived.

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Copyright © 2012 by Patricia A. Wight.

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4797-1181-9

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4797-1182-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

0-800-644-6988

www.xlibrispublishing.co.uk

304824

Contents

A Letter to You, the Reader,

Dedication

The Void

Things I Have Learnt in My Life So Far:

A Letter on Personality and Emotion

A Letter to Parents

What Little Children Dream Of…

My Mother’s Arms

My Favourite Colour

The Promise

Letter to a Firstborn Child

To the Sweetest Daughters

From the Mouths of Babes

Letter on Sisters and Brothers

A Letter on Acceptance of Your Parents

Dear Dad

But, You Didn’t

Father

A Letter on Love

A Letter on Suicide

Depression

A Letter on Losing a Child

A Letter on Age

Age

A Letter Regarding an ‘Eating Disorder’

Women

Because I’m Not That

A Letter on the Gift of Today

A Letter on War, Violence, and Crime

Dompas

A Letter to a Drug Addict

A Letter on Alcoholism

The Outsider

A Letter on Child Molestation

Letter to an Abusive Partner

This Small Space

Issues

A Letter on Being Saved,

A Letter to a Loving Partner

A Letter on Human Nature

A Letter on Forgiveness

A Letter on Life

A Letter on Silence

A Letter on Health

A Letter on Sincerity and Truth

In Conclusion

A Letter to You, the Reader,

Your desperate eyes search for an answer. Come, look. Are you ready to travel into these hidden places? Throughout yourself you have aimlessly ventured, only to discover the same loneliness separating you from everyone else. Deep within yourself, you know how you truly feel. Is it not this very self-revelation that you persistently fight? Are you right in defending who you are not? Are you wrong in surrendering who you are? You could be anything or anyone, and sometimes, you can be so different from one moment to the next, that, if you tried to explain it, you would only reveal that which is more and that which is less of who you are.

Sometimes, you become totally embroiled in the concrete expectations society has of you, your hopes and dreams, your basic and most innate lusts for life, which are all forced into this neatly slotted brick wall in an attempt to reinforce the illusion of normality and acceptability, but in actuality, it causes a tragic disintegration of authenticity, blocking out the dreams that were beyond and suffocating the hope that was within. Who are you really hiding from—the world or yourself?

Trapped within this void, somewhere between conformity and anarchy—both are pretty awful, so where’s the equilibrium? Is it the void? Is this what you are striving towards? Confusion, futility, a place called ‘nowhere’? A place where no one is going to find you because it just doesn’t exist!

You know the vital organs which give you ‘life’:—your brain, your lungs, and your heart. But what renders you to ‘living’ it vitally if you cannot think without restriction, if you cannot exhale the futility that suffocates you, if you cannot trust what it is you feel? Life is like an aborted embryo wrapped in colourful yet transparent cellophane. The patriots of conformity attempt to market this foil, translucent package. They live for the cosmetic façade, the veneer. What are you living it for? The abortive gunge beneath!

You extend yourself towards unattainable parameters, constantly setting closer limitations and restrictions, in a futile endeavor of justifying your underachievements—your failures! You are your highest and your lowest limit, between which you are infinite. Knowledge lives where experience has killed. The rigidity of logic stains the delicate fabric of reality, a bombastic form of classical conditioning, a ritualistic conformation, nullifying individuality!

Look at your image in the mirror. Is it you? Or is it the reflection of who you want the world to perceive you to be? There is no voice in the mirror, no wisdom, no love. Only the brittle, cold, mercurial glass that cracks and shatters your