"You can afford to be a romantic because you're self-sufficient." I wish that had been told to me years ago, before I turned in on myself. Slowly I'm coming back, having reduced myself almost to nothing. Hollowed out and worn, looking straight through people when they talk to me.
I don't have a narrative for what brought me here. Just images, silent pictures, exaggerated expressions. I was somewhere else, and now I'm here, with no bridge between. I was someone else, and now I'm this other person and I don't recognize either of them. Living a life that has no anchor to it, nothing to wrap my soul around.
I bought new tennis shoes today, laced them up and ran. I haven't done that in years, but my body remembered, fell back in to the smooth rhythm that used to eat up miles almost effortlessly. Only a couple for me today, and my cartilage bereft knees hating me, but it was worth it.
Friday I walked through a forest in the rain again. Smelled it, tasted it, was moved by it. An old friend not spoken with for many years. An old magic I thought I had lost forever.
I am being brought back to life by something I don't understand, like I'm being willed into an existence by some force I don't have a name for. My hands itch. And I know this feeling, this wanting. A desire to create things, to plant trees, raise up fountains, give joy. As if by some transient alchemical process I could refute cruelty, transmute pain into happiness, heal broken hearts. I know I can do none of these things though, have tried before and failed, many times. Maybe whoever it is that brought me here can.