The Search

When I go back over what I've written in my journal, I feel gentle sadness touch my heart.  It's not just Nostalgia, for I am old friends with him also – no, it is sadness.  As I read the struggles that so pitifully clutter the pages of my diary, I am filled with a longing to understand my problems better than I did back then.  I was young; I was foolish; I couldn't see the forest for the trees.  I am older; I am wiser; I have the blessing of hindsight.  And I wish to understand my problems better than I did back then.

But I cannot.  It's true that many of my struggles are far behind me, and that some are buried deep where I hope they will never be found again, and that some are simply over, though not closed.  And yet, when I analyze the inner workings of myself, I cannot find the reason that any of this should be what it is.  I can know how I felt in the midst of a struggle and I can judge what I did in the midst of a struggle; and I can feel heartily ashamed or embarrassed, or relieved.  But I cannot understand why I have done what I have done, whatever it is I have done, that has done what it has done to my heart.

In the past, I fancied I had an answer to my struggles, but I fear it was merely what has been called a placebo.  It does no real good to heal a real wound that festers and pulsates in unheeded agony within my spirit.  Some of these wounds scar, but they close.  And others only cover themselves with scabs that come tearing off with the least bit of tension.  But what is it that choses which wounds will heal and which will not?  Who is it that decides that the simplest wounds will be the deepest, or the roughest ones the silliest?  For yes, some wounds are laughable; mere scrapes on a rose bush – but they are wounds all the same, aren't they?  Never to go quite away.

And it is this which I would understand if I could.  But the deeper I delve, the less I understand.  I look down at the dirt and I think I understand the ground; but I begin to dig, and as soon as I find such sights as delight my senses and intrigue my curiosity, deeper I go, until I no longer see the sunlight, and my wee candle is not enough to illuminate the dark moulder that I have found; so I dig deeper, hoping to understand – but it is clear that I cannot.  I do not understand the dirt better now than I did before.  In fact, perhaps I understand it less than I did then, for now I am all caught up in the little sights that I found to delight my senses, and I no longer look down and say, "This is the ground."  For it is not – having gone under the surface, there is nothing beneath me in this chasm to plant under my feet and be called the earth on which I stood.

I have blasted it open now.  There is no going back.  I must keep searching.

~Meggy

P.S. What do you think – writing-wise, is this overdone?