And so went the tale
of the self-appointed healer:
An optimist, a nihilist,
a vessel for pain in a fatalistic world,
a diagnostic checklist.

Wars were waged,
defenses built
against existential angst.
No evil stirred the watcher above;
she took matters into her hands.

The suffering within
and around her grew—
no end in sight.
In time, she was faced with a bitter truth:
Her strength was finite.

Was it learned helplessness?
probed a book.
Was she truly free?
Were there remedial doors that opened
with resolution’s key?

Language began to fail
as did rituals and pills.
Her vessel developed cracks
from insurmountable ills.
Disenchanted with every cure,
the healer turned to the sea—

Why contain my waves? she bellowed.
Won’t you come and flow with me?
Bend with my winds, they will have you know:
Catastrophe could be a teacher of
the art of letting go.

A savior for what was unsaved,
but a self-imprisoned renegade.
Perhaps one day, the healer will see—
Empathy never needed erasure
under a blind watcher’s decree.

Beyond control and the pride of virtue,
waited a forsaken view:
where healing began
not with fixing the other,
but finding the other
in you.