Loudspeaker

5. Lost

When you crashed onto the ground
You fell apart.
Your body shattered into hundreds of pieces -
Now just dust and ash across the floor.
When your head hit the concrete
Your mind broke apart and fluttered away in the blustery wind.
And only then, when you had sunk so deep
Freshly fallen from grace
Did you see yourself.
Only then, through the tears did you see yourself
Embedded in the thorns
Planted deep within the ground
Infiltrated the rock that broke you so brutally
Did you see yourself.
You were totally isolated and irreversibly changed
Completely lost.

Easing yourself up, rubbing your bruised head
Nursing your battered mentality
You began stitching yourself back together, mending old wounds
Then finding new cuts across your feet.
You saw that all those lies built into your belief system
All the misconceptions moulded to your mind
All the whispers written across your body
Had died in the flames
Were extinguished by the waves.
Because both cannot coexist within you
Either you are who you know yourself to be
Or the echoes whipped in the wind are true.

Sometimes you need everything to fall apart
To find your focus
To find your way.
Sometimes the only way to heal is to acknowledge the hurt
And when the fire fizzles over your past
Burns through the old you
You can either lie there defeated or move towards the truth
Life is only somewhat the cards that are dealt to you
But mostly how you play your hand.
Either the destruction ends you or the light mends you.

Rising a new entity from the ashes
Surfacing from the waters
Moving into the daylight
A thick, swirling, viscous fog descended over your eyes
The tide went out, the sun began to fade
And you feared deep within that you were stranded again.
So captivated by the clouds
So desperate to escape the forest
You forgot about the games and pains that shaped you.
On the ground, where you were once a crumpled heap
Words and messages, honest truths and bitter lessons were spattered across the rock
Letters rearranged from the ink that once spelt out the lies you defined yourself with.

The words engraved into the stone cut into you
As you began to recall so clearly how your heart used to ache
Looking in the mirror, the voices were far too much to take
Then how your brain would break you
Overthinking every single mistake.
You can remember instantaneously each headline, every order that had been drilled into you
How you used to bow down to those beliefs of brutality
Honoured self-hatred, placed it on a plastic pedestal
Now you need to find real faith in you
Accept the facets of yourself that are genuinely true
And distinguish between the moments that have the potential to make you
And the ones that could break you.

Although you barely knew where you were going
A haze of anxiety over your eyes
Your mind lacking clarity
Your legs somehow managed to take you forward
For a moment you were unsure of where you wanted to go
And had no idea of where you were expected to go.
Despite shaking hands, and goosebumps racing across your arms
A deep pit in your stomach and sweaty palms
Ringing danger alarms
The intrinsic beat of your heart
The rhythm of your song
Pushed you out to sea with the breeze.
The waters came back in, just in time
As you waded out into the waves.

With each step you felt stronger, more determined, self-aware
Your legs were no longer tied
Your arms could freely move
Your head did not weigh you down
Your eyes found the spotlights in the distance
And your voice spoke the truth
Whereas for the first time ever, your ears blocked the lies.
A cool wind blew in your face, brushed away the dirt and destruction
But this time you didn't shake in the face of your fears
You were beginning to learn that life is less about how to weather the storm
But more about how to dance in the rain
Less about finding the light
More about being your own
Less about following the path
And more about paving a new way.

The shimmering waters washed away the blood from the incisions
Flowed over your bruised back as you submerged yourself in the blue
Despite the thick cloud encompassing you
Despite anxieties of what was ahead
And fears of what had passed
Despite dreading drowning in the hammering rain
For once, you trusted yourself
And eventually found your way.
And when you arrived at the meadow
You were no longer lost. 

Although the rain was spitting from the still somewhat grey sky
Hundreds of flowers shone around you
Emerald grass brushed against your feet in the blustery breeze.
And only then did you see yourself
As the person you were, the person you are, and the person you will be.
You realised that everything you have in life
Is a direct result of the rain you've danced through
And the light that mended you.

These bright splashes of colour all around grew from the seeds sowed there
Their roots are outstretched across the rock you once hit
The water that helped them grow was the rain that drowned you, the waves that saved you
The light that sustained them was both the fire that burnt you and the light within you.
And when you went up in flames, was scarred by the thorns
You never thought you'd be here again
Admiring something so beautiful.

You saw that from the moment you began
You were never truly lost
You just had to come full circle to find yourself.
If you only you knew when you fell from the clouds
It was to reach the stars.

LD x ~ 9/7/20