Nomad Writer

There’s a pendulum swinging somewhere beyond the hedges of my periphery. A tick-tocking that reverberates distantly through the still air. But it doesn’t shake my chest with panic or fear. No. It’s more the sound of time being on my side. A sound of reassurance through this slow process of rediscovering myself.

It’s a little maddening, how easy it was for me to lose sight of the thing I loved. And for the most part, I never truly felt myself slipping deeper within that ravine beyond the hollow of my soul – though I was well aware something wasn’t quite right. If that part of me had ever screamed out for me to notice her, I’d been deaf to every desperate cry. And I carried on, as if nothing was ever really out of place, even when I could feel this painful scratching at the back of my head.

There were several times I tried to write. Endless pages filled with this single line. Just this one, unanswered question: “What would it feel like to reemerge from obscurity?” 
Those words on spindly, fawn-like legs, aimlessly stumbled round and round the spiraling pathways in my head.

But now I know that it feels like coming up for air. Gulping oxygen within weary lungs. Like remembering how to breathe and being conscious of every deep and filling breath, wanting more of it until the air balloons, threatening to burst inside me because I don’t want to lose that feeling. The feeling of being alive again. And I want to write all the things overflowing my head so that my brain doesn’t choke on this rising flood of ideas.

I wondered when I’d know that I’d found myself again. But now I realize I’d been holding on to her all this time. That I’d never really lost myself or what was important to me.

The truth is, those things are never truly lost. Because they’re always right there, waiting for you to see them.