Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2001

brief moment

Sometimes there are things that I do that make me wonder why I do them. After they are done I regret them. After I have missed an opportunity I wish I could go back and embrace it. Sometimes I do things that feel entirely right and turn out to be grotesquely wrong. And once I have wrongfully enacted something, I can’t go back and turn it right side up.

Sometimes I think I simply think too much about the world around me. Most times I know that I am too complex for the people I want to have around me. I always know that if I just exhaled and forgot half of my fears I would be a much happier person. Other times I think my fears were the warmth like blankets that kept me from falling over the edges.

Today…today I knew in one brief moment that everything was pretty right within me. I know who I am. I know what I want. I know where I am going. I know that there will be pitfalls and quick sand and I know that I will get lost from time to time and my feet will get stuck in the sticky gum on the concrete of life. But today…

Yes today….in one brief moment the sun was setting and I finally felt ok. I finally feel that girl coming back, the one that I lost so long ago. The one that smiles at me from pictured memories. I felt her moving into my skin. Taking her rightful place again. I felt her finding her way back. I felt her breathing evenly inside my chest, looking happily out of my eyes.

That girl that believed everything in the world was possible. That girl who trusted blindly will never come back, but in her place is a girl who refuses to close off her heart to the possibilities that tomorrow holds.

My hands on the steering wheel…I saw my fingers…. devoid of gold. My hands haven’t changed. In all the turmoil and pain some things have remained. I saw my eyes in the rearview mirror. I thought of the good things that I have done in the last year. There have been amazing moments of happiness.

I remember that day after…not the 11th..but the 12th. I remember talking. I remember how nice it felt to talk so freely about the events. I remember thinking that days and weeks and years from that point I would remember that day. The way I felt that day. Just to talk that way. I remember …the simple remembering of who I used to be. He …he always reminded me. Reminded me enough that I wanted her to come back all the way in every single day. I feared then that it might never happen…that it might never come to be. Today…today….I felt again….somehow just like me.

I look back and I now see more clearly the good like a light shining. Somewhere along the way I let go of the pain. The wicked and rusted chains that were holding me back. Somewhere along the way I had reasons enough to smile. And those smiles gave me strength to move forward and believe in myself again.

Something got said last night that brought tears of truth to my eyes. To touch someone with hands that don’t possess true love, is the most bitterly painful thing. To pretend for the sake of anything, is just not good enough. But to let yourself forget who you are, what you are, what you have inside. To bury it so deep that all the pain becomes who you are is the saddest thing I have ever done to myself.

I saw my hands today. I held them out inside the sun. And I smiled. I know who I am. I know I am beautifully me. I know that I have so much to give. And what I want is always right at the tip of my fingers just around the corner from tomorrow and I am stretching my fingers to get there.

A single puzzle piece doesn’t make a pretty picture but one missing piece will leave you empty wanting to feel complete.

Thank you for showing me how to find all the pieces of what used to be me. ….for seeing the whole picture when I couldn’t possibly and for long enough for me to open my own eyes.

Smiling…
PoeticaL

 I don’t know just when I really found me,
At times I wonder why it took so long.
Only thing I know is deep inside me,
When I’m there it makes me feel so strong.
-rafferty/egan

poetical at 7:35 p.m.

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