"You can afford to be a romantic because you're self-sufficient." I wish that had been told to me years ago, before I turned in on myself. Slowly I'm coming back, having reduced myself almost to nothing. Hollowed out and worn, looking straight through people when they talk to me.
I don't have a narrative for what brought me here. Just images, silent pictures, exaggerated expressions. I was somewhere else, and now I'm here, with no bridge between. I was someone else, and now I'm this other person and I don't recognize either of them. Living a life that has no anchor to it, nothing to wrap my soul around.
I bought new tennis shoes today, laced them up and ran. I haven't done that in years, but my body remembered, fell back in to the smooth rhythm that used to eat up miles almost effortlessly. Only a couple for me today, and my cartilage bereft knees hating me, but it was worth it.
Friday I walked through a forest in the rain again. Smelled it, tasted it, was moved by it. An old friend not spoken with for many years. An old magic I thought I had lost forever.
I am being brought back to life by something I don't understand, like I'm being willed into an existence by some force I don't have a name for. My hands itch. And I know this feeling, this wanting. A desire to create things, to plant trees, raise up fountains, give joy. As if by some transient alchemical process I could refute cruelty, transmute pain into happiness, heal broken hearts. I know I can do none of these things though, have tried before and failed, many times. Maybe whoever it is that brought me here can.

.
Beyond the massif peaks of Europa,
Above the ancient pillars of Heracles
Where rain and ocean are weaving,
Lays a fabled kingdom born of waves
And noble strands, my beaten hearts
Haunting, the lost, lush sylvan lands
Of Galicia.
                   Where Incomparable, dark
Haired women, mythic, of Amazonian
Fairness, side the valleys and moors
Of soon forgotten dreams and secretive
Wolves slide amongst warmed runnings
Of the ram and moans of ewe, where
Way bountiful seas are over spilling,
In octopus and pearly gemmed shells,
The scalloped pilgrimages unfolding,
Where incense burns with under stars
Encased, the lost Atlantean temples
Of Egyptian sands and storied Gaels,
The clad forests of wandering Titans,

Where snow white beaches end forever
Unmapped in told footsteps, castaway,
As was the magi gift of treasured yards,
Enlightenments, of old and golden isles
Pearling the coasts, sailing the sweet airs
Crossing Iberian gates, to Elysian, eternal,
Galicia.

I am here now,
empty handed and barefoot,
but somehow
able to see things again.

By some miracle
perhaps ,
my desire was tempered
by the Friend's whispering,
so that I may be a better friend
to you.

That's my private name for her...Grey Eyes. And they are very, very grey, a lake shrouded in mist. A strange thing, to be in love with a feeling. To be enamored of arrivals, departures, mitigations. Odd also, when someone leads you to an understanding of yourself...or at least, a part of yourself. It is satisfying for me to let futures go. In some strange way, it's fulfilling and sad, for someone to reach out a hand to me across the dark waters. To see a possibility, very much yearned for, and to deprive myself of it. I was given an offer today that I had thought about often, daydreamed and hungered for. Ultimately I declined, my reasons being vague at the time, though my explanation was valid (somewhat). "I get uncomfortable when I can't pack up everything and leave in a day, and I wouldn't want to do that to you". I didn't think about whether I may have hurt her by saying that, though it wouldn't have changed my answer. Something deep inside whispered of danger and confinement should I have taken that road, great sorrows unimagined. Somehow it was deeply moving to be able to stare down my childish craving, and turn away, to be able to recognize that this path was not for me. People like me, people with a history but no story, don't move in with a woman that they have feelings for and end up happy. I've walked that way before, though the stakes were much lower and I much younger. One more test passed. I never wanted to admit this about myself, but now I suppose I can accept it without shame, without anger or judgement. I sometimes enjoy killing my dreams. Rather, killing things about myself that have no purpose but to cause distraction and delay, ideas and hopes that lead sideways rather than forward. Of all the skills taught to me by my Father, this has been the most valuable.