I Was Looking for Something

I was looking for something

I’ve been looking for something for longer than I’ve known,

It has sent to me to places I had no business being,

Places which convinced me that I belonged.

While I got stripped down, bare

While I got bruised and broken

Places where the chipped pieces were left, kicked beneath feet

Dancing in the waves of the swift-moving winds

I was looking for something.

I’ve been looking for something that I was certain that I needed,

I needed it.

I craved it.

It sustained me.

It made me.

It inspired me, I thought-

It fueled me, it seemed,

until

It destroyed me.

until

It broke me into pieces I would have thought were already too small to be further fragmented.

How do you search for something without knowing it?

How do you find something that you cannot recognize?

Where do you start to look?

And how do you know when you’ve found it?

Time showed me what it was when I let her take the lead,

Pain taught me to recognize what it was not,

Honesty pointed me in the direction of the stuffed dusty corners of myself,

The derelict stored memories that I did not want to acknowledge,

The depths of misplaced identities that had found their way in without welcome.

I was looking for something.

Oh, I searched desperately

Yes, I sought it without a moment’s rest

But as it turns out-

I was looking for something that I never lost

I was looking for something.

What sweet pain-

What bitter relief-

To know that it’s been here all along.