I spent years going in these circles. Trying to “fix” myself. Trying to figure out the trick of myself. I am no longer a puzzle to be solved. Being tossed around in the underground did something, it polished me fine and smooth like a tumbled rock, until I was no longer myself who I had grown up to be. Telemachus, formed by the absence of what’s needed. Now, I am refined to a smooth finish, a soulful shine, that takes that edge and grinds it down until it’s something beautiful.

Everything in my life was a test. Not in the way of a purposeful test that this is for your own good, but a whetstone that cut me down invisible sandy layer after layer. And it took years. Decades, rather. I have spent my whole life becoming this person and I don’t even know who I really I am. All I do know is that after decades of forming myself under these circumstances, I now no longer need to know who I am because I am being who I am. It is no longer a chase, just like all my old lovers. It is Love, here to stay. And that is something to get used to.

The art of striving was never meant to be a lifestyle. It is there for a purposeful jaunt from which we then reap the rewards. If that is not happening then something is wrong, we are on the wrong path, we are trying too hard and cutting off the lifeforce. Because ours is a life of divine providence, given to us in the trees, and the air we breathe, and the land around us that shimmers with gold and light that lifts our spirits and makes our brains work right. (It’s about the point in the winter when I’m experiencing SAD, can-you-tell).

I know it is trite to say and I hate anyone who tries to talk to me about the richness of Earth while I’m suffering inside, who offers me a simple solution to an all encompassing feeling and let-me-be-clear – that is not what I’m trying to say.

What I am trying to say is, if it is too hard, Stop. Ours is not a life of eternal strife with no pay out. Something needs to be readjusted, and perhaps you will find that under the ground of the Earth of your own two feet (Looking Inside). And if you do find yourself underground, don’t assume that you are supposed to stay there. Know that all bulbs bloom in the Spring. All that is buried will find it’s way to the surface. Bubbles (and feelings) always float up. And yours is a timing of it’s own. Even if it is years later, you are meant to emerge.

And when you do, you may find yourself like me. No longer the adapted, striving thing who went underground, but a gem polished of your own inclusions and imperfections, someone wholly unto you. Someone who deserves and belongs, exactly where they are planted. I may not recognize myself in continuity from who I’ve been, but I know this person from some other life in which I have always been.