The River

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For a very long time, I felt that I was standing on a riverbank overlooking a river. And that river is everything that I am: every emotion, every like and dislike, every goal, every dream, every experience. My core and my heart. I can never touch the river, I just look and long for it and live my life in shallowness and superficiality. 

Until recently.

For years, I felt that I had an underbaked personality and identity and that I was just a shell of a person dragging themselves forward. 

But something has changed. I spent these past six months staying up too late and sleeping too much and walking a tightrope of practicality and exhaustion and abruptly, I can breathe. There are so many possibilities.

Suddenly, it is spring. There are so many flowers and tree and leaves and birds and I hear the spring peepers calling. I can smell the humidity and lilacs and feel the sun and the breeze on my skin and I am myself again and I am more myself than I have ever been.

My potential is limitless and I can do whatever I please. There are so many books to read and so many animals to find and so many songs to sing and write and so many movies to watch and so many places to travel to and so many wonderful people to meet and spend time with and deepen my connections with.

I am swimming in the river after a long, long time. Maybe for the first time. My emotions and passions were not dead, just dormant. They needed nurturing, like a plant, and now I feel them blossoming. I have been confined to a limited mind, but I am free.

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