If it's true what they say, that the journey isn't so much about what we have to gain, but what we still have left to lose, then I may be on my way.
Because I have lost it. Completely.
It started innocently enough. Losing my will to pretend, to settle for half-truths, sorta, almost, kinda maybes.
So I started saying no. With a smile, a shaky voice, and a lot of apologies. You know, trying to maintain my footing where I still could.
But then it starting eating away at my will to be good. And diligent. And virtuous. Tall orders that I could not fill. (What's the use of praying when God is everywhere?)
So I lost my place among the righteous, among the praiseworthy. Among the...salt of the earth? What's that?
(But freedom tastes so good. Truth seduces me like a lie.)
And who could possibly, after even the smallest taste of beauty, maintain a will for sober living? With all the opportunities to get intoxicated on sunsets, and kisses, and touches. With the wind and sun and rain on skin.
And being cracked open by love and anger and laughing and crying and all the other gravities of being human, with soul rising from those cracks and spilling over the edges... I'm stumbling drunk with truth!
Oh, and don't get me started about aging. The way I've lost my will to look like a smokin' hot twenty-year-old when my thirties rise up and flood me with passion lava that fills my wrinkles, smooths my skin, pools in areas of lost breast density (I know, right?), and doesn't care whether I wear mascara or not.
And how can I be expected to settle for a boring fuck, a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am situation, some kind of stale, ordinary, containable sex when I have lifetimes of love running through my veins? When there are fewer and fewer barriers between me and my soul on fire. When I have desires so strong they kill me a little more every day. When I have rivers to run and mountains to move and magic to make.
Yeah, I've been losing it alright.
Losing my will to play small. My will to keep it all contained in an honorable, recognizable format of a life.
How could I, when my laughter spills over the edge of my grief? When my deepest apologies go unfelt and unspoken. When my destiny sets fire to my character. Up in flames. I am toast.
Gone is my will for right or wrong, for happy or sad, for black or white, for strength or weakness, for this or that, for staying or leaving. Are we coming or going? Are we falling or flying? I don't even care anymore. I'll take them both. And the space in between them.
Oh, the space in between.
Where the river meets the ocean and the ocean meets the sky. Where a lie is truth and truth is a lie. And transcendence obliterates your mind. Where no one really suspects anything, because no one really knows anything.
So you have nothing to prove and nothing to hide. And pretty or ugly, you can only be beautiful there, except to those still standing on either side.
But by the time you get there, you don't care what they say anyway. To them, you're crazy if you do, you're damned if you don't. So, to hell with it.
Enough! I've made my point.
If it's true what they say, that you have to lose yourself to find yourself, then I am lost, I am lost, I am lost.