Destiny

I had to let go of that dream.

It was to be me.

In that picture of a happy family-

There, on the other side of the world.

Sometimes you don’t get the life you think you should have.

What you get is a chance to look closer.

A chance to stop wanting more,

and start wanting wholeness.

No matter how hard you look,

you will never see that picture with clarity.

Instead,

one day

you wake up

and see your destiny.

Reaching out to grab you by the scruff of the neck.

Telling you to look at what you created,

and what you destroyed,

right there in front of you.

It’s funny how that works.

We have.

We loose.

And then all we can do is rebuild.

There is no other way around it.

The loss lives with you always.

It’s a splinter of wood in flesh.

There, just below the surface.

A subtle reminder-

as you walk with it in your side.

week 51.

I've been experimenting with watercolor. I did this piece that seemed to resemble clouds with rain. It reminded me of a poem I wrote a few years back. Lately I've been thinking a lot about this idea of rebuilding, starting new. I try to accept all the choices I've made, good and bad. It seems every day we have to carry all those choices with us into everything we do, like a kind of scar. To carry the past and rebuild at the same time seem very brave to me. It also seems like a bigger feat than we give it credit for. The past can block us at every turn. The things we tell ourselves can confuse us with their contradictions. What is really the truth of who you are can be so damn hard to see but it seems important to keep looking for it, even in the pain.