Who Says That You Can't Live Forever?

One day I found a meadow in the maze

And I decided to stay there

Scary beings would sometimes enter the meadow,

but it no longer would send me out in panic to the darkness searching

And then I realized that all the people I ran into in the maze had their own meadows

Touchstones that I could never see

And finally I felt new compassion for the little girl who was lost too young

So Long ?

The tightening happened slowly and then everywhere at once.

I'm 12 now and I see a starting line

Everyone I know is next to me and I wonder why

I hear a gun go off and people run in every direction

I take off too in search of connection

And now I'm running down the street, but I don't see my surroundings

There's no time to stop and talk, the future is always coming

I continue running but now years have passed, I turn to look behind me and I no longer see anyone. 

I am not someone that carefully weighs decisions before I jump in. I am someone who always jumps knowing there’s no parachute and I attempt to find meaning along the way. I have often stumbled and struggled and instead of running away from these experiences, I pushed myself harder to meet the requirements necessary to prove something to myself about my worth.

From a young age I was always drawn to winter. The period where the earth holds its breath before it races toward growth again. I have felt deep companionship with the trees in their most vulnerable state. I too have felt my safest infrastructure slowly fade away from me. I feel exposed, vulnerable, cold, and freezing, somehow even in 80 degrees. Yet in my frozen solitude, I find a beautiful place of rest.

Life right now is like touching a live electrical wire. Pain shoots straight to the center of my being and I am helpless to stop it. I don't attend mass anymore, but I find comfort in the thought that in churches around the world people pray for those in liminal spaces. I hope their prayers reach me and that mine have reached heaven. Many days I find I don't have the hope to wish for that. Heaven feels a place I have been excluded from the potential of since I was a girl.