It had to be this way,
The endless nights of wandering,
The pain of loss, the cost of gain,
The sorrow, wracking soul and brain --
I look back now and say
There was no other path to take;
This was the only way.

I clung, as drowning, feared
The loss of that which dragged me down,
The agony of wounds unbound,
The questions swarming to confound;
But as my ruin neared
I rose, on shaky, nervous wings
Over a landscape, newly cleared.

There's beauty in the pain;
The rain revealed the green of life;
Love grew between the cracks of strife.
Shadow and sunshine shared the knife
That cut away my chain:
Life is a dance of opposites --
The beauty is the pain.