Lost & Found

I lost something. I am not positive that I know what it is, but I miss it.

I think it might be gratitude? Maybe its trust or faith? Maybe its love. Its something soft and ungraspable and lovely.

It has something to do with the surprise wave of joy that seeps in and lifts you up and grabs your attention so you are left marveling at the beauty in the world. I want surprise beauty, the melt of the heart accompanied by the wisdom of a child's words, the feeling of acceptance that comes with old friends and easy laughter.

I realize that I have to stop looking so hard. It will find me when I have let my shoulders drop and am ready to take in what the world has to offer.

I haven't been making room for that.

Loss and fear and hurt have raised walls -- thick stone walls that rumbled and thundered and shook the ground when they rose in preperation to protect me. I called them forth. They keep me safe while I am busy preparing.

I have been very busy preparing. First for my written qualifying exams and now for my oral defense. I am preparing so that I can pass and go on to do more preperation ...and so that I don't have to think about the choices that lay before me and so I don't have to prepare to walk away.

I hate walking away. I want to find something good in the hard stuff. I want to have my cold unforgiving stone walls and be open to the world and its beauty and all the good things at the same time. I can't have both.

I think I search for these things in my dreams, but I never find them. Instead I wake up clutching the sheets, my knuckles white and my pinkie fingers numb. I wake up filled with sorrow for all the loss, for the questions I have answered wrong, for the darkness of the safe place I've made.

I have decided that to find what I am looking for I need to let the wall go. I need to let go of preparing to prepare to do something I don't want to do. Life is short. I must open my eyes and experience the world and be here today, walking the earth. I can't do that dragging a big stone wall around.