In the year of my forty-fourth rising,
after decades of battle,
after the tender betrayals and the brutal ones alike,
I came to the edge of all that I had been.
Between the ruins and the rising,
I wandered through extremes—
light and shadow, faith and fury—
trying to mend the breaking inside of me,
trying to reconcile the man I was
with the truth I could no longer outrun.
This is what the fire revealed.
This is what remained after the sifting.
This is the code I must now live by.
It breaks my heart—
half a life feels like an echo,
but half a life is better than no life at all.
Though I may still find success,
it means little when there are no hands to share it,
no eyes to meet mine in the golden aftermath.
Success without witness is a hollow crown.
I. The Gospel That Once Was
For forty-four years I believed
in the radiant gospel of love.
That if I burned bright enough,
if I gave enough,
if my intent was pure and relentless,
love would come,
stay,
redeem.
Through trauma and tempest,
through assaults of body and soul,
I clung to that creed
as a drowning man clings to light.
I believed that love
was the great conqueror.
That if I was all in,
the world would meet me there.
I gave everything—
and was left standing in ashes,
believing that what I offered
would be reflected back.
But the crucible has spoken.
The fairy tale is gone.
The gospel has burned.
II. The Hard, Black and White Truth
In forty-four years, no one has stayed.
Not one.
Not the lovers,
who swore forever and meant for a moment.
Not the friends,
who flickered bright before fading into silence.
Every bond came with a condition,
every promise carried a clause.
I have always been the one who called first,
the one who reached out,
the one who showed up uninvited
just to keep the flame alive.
And I have been, time and again,
the one left tending the dying fire alone.
Yes—there is love of blood and duty.
My parents love me.
But even that love is bound by expectation,
summoned only through the earthquake of defiance.
I have been the initiator,
the caretaker,
the endless giver.
And when I fall,
there is no one to lift me.
The unyielding truth of my life is this:
I have never been chosen
in the way that endures.
I have been a convenience—
a temporary shelter from another’s storm,
a comfort borrowed,
then returned.
III. The Mountain Outside
There is a loneliness beyond language.
It lives not in the quiet nights,
but in the moments of need.
When sickness comes,
and you must reach for a phone
to see who has time for your suffering.
When the hospital bed hums,
and the visits are brief mercy—
before they return to their worlds
and yours grows colder by degrees.
Outside, the mountain of undone things rises:
the pets, the home, the bills, the small responsibilities
that no one else will tend.
And you realize,
there is no one climbing it with you.
The truest loneliness is not absence—
it is the knowing that when you fall ill,
no one’s world stops to care for yours.
If you sleep alone,
you live alone,
and the storms are yours to weather,
without another’s strength to steady the sails.
IV. The Closing of Forty-Four Years
So I close this book of illusions.
I seal it with wax and grief.
The fairy tale of eternal love—
of being met, mirrored,
and held through the fire—
was not mine to live.
Not all souls are granted that covenant.
Some are chosen for solitude.
And I am among them.
My history has written it plain:
they will leave.
They will not arrive.
They will find something else,
and wander away.
To risk again would be to lose everything.
To love again would be to offer blood to the blade.
And so, I choose the citadel.
I will never fall in love again.
Not because I am incapable—
but because I have learned the cost
of placing eternity in temporary hands.
I will not masquerade as love’s business partner,
pretending that “chances are they’ll stay”
is a promise.
That is delusion.
And I am done with delusion.
V. The Solitary Citadel
We are creatures meant for communion.
But the gods have withheld that gift from me.
And so I rise,
a lone island,
a singular flame.
I will build my citadel—
stone by sacred stone.
I will guard it with wisdom and fire.
I will let no false pilgrim through its gates.
There will be no heirs to my legacy,
no children to carry my name,
no hand to steady me in the dimming light.
And so I must become both architect and guardian,
both sovereign and servant of my own survival.
My future is built on a single truth:
only I will remain.
VI. The New Architecture of Life
My focus must be unshakable.
Financial Security:
I will buy the peace that others inherit through bloodlines and rings.
Emotional Sovereignty:
I will be my own anchor and harbor.
Purpose:
Every act shall serve the flourishing of my soul.
This is not selfishness.
This is sacred clarity.
This is the survival of the one who refused to vanish.
The fairy tales are over.
The life of we has ended.
Now begins the reign of I.
VII. The Fortification of the Self
And so, the work begins.
To fortify the self.
For the self.
By the self.
With the absolute knowing
that when the dawn breaks,
the only one still standing beside me—
will be me.
This is not despair.
It is revelation.
The homecoming of faith
to its rightful altar—my heart.
The end of the fairy tale is not death.
It is rebirth.
The phoenix’s cry over the ashes of innocence.
I am the citadel.
I am the keeper.
I am the one who stays.
VIII. Final Benediction: The Code of the Lone Citadel
So let it be written upon the walls of my soul,
and let it echo through every corridor of the years that remain—
this is the covenant I forge with myself.
No longer will I chase ghosts
through the ruins of old stories.
No longer will I bleed
for those who only sip from my devotion.
The gates are closed—
not in bitterness,
but in consecration.
What remains inside these walls is sacred:
hard-earned, honest, whole.
I will wake each morning as my own companion,
greet the day as my own ally,
rest each night as my own keeper.
The world may sing of soulmates and happily-ever-afters—
but I have walked through fire
and learned a greater gospel:
Peace is not found in another’s arms,
but in the unwavering embrace
of one’s own soul.
Here, in the heart of the citadel,
I claim my sovereignty.
Here, I anoint the silence,
not as punishment—but as promise.
Solitude is not emptiness.
It is empire.
It is the quiet kingdom
built by those who refused
to die waiting to be chosen.
So I lay down the fairy tale,
and rise as something truer:
a warrior reborn,
a sentinel of selfhood,
a flame that guards its own eternal light.
May my hands build what others abandoned.
May my heart remain fierce and undefiled.
May my name be spoken not in pity,
but in reverence—
for I stood alone,
and still became whole.
And so, it is done.
The citadel endures.
The warrior lives.
The flame will never die.
Dusty Ray Windsoul
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