That moment is unlike any other. Whether you are expecting the grief or it surprises you, there is no way to describe the very second you learn you have a new future. Tunnel vision sets in, you can’t catch your breath. All you hear is the loudest sound you’ve ever heard and it is coming from within you – your heart is shattering like hot glass being hit with cold water. How will you pick up the pieces? The back winds of the storm blow through and sweep a piece of your soul off into the sky. Chase as I might, I couldn’t catch up. Exhausted so I rested on the side of my new road. After what seems like dozens of sunrises and sunsets I finally had the energy to stand, still sore from my great shattering. One foot in front of the other in the direction I thought I’d find the missing piece so I started my epic journey to find it again.
It seems impossible at first. I felt like I would never find it again. It is stealthy and any glimpse I caught of it was fleeting. I wasn’t even sure anymore if I lost it or it left me. Either way, it is gone and I didn’t know if I’d ever get it back but forever forward. Maybe, just maybe, someone ahead will find it and hold on to it so they could fix me in the future. Three and a half years later, I was still thinking that someone out there waiting to fix me. I’d have a thought about better days and suddenly there’d be a rustling nearby.
“Hello. Who’s there? Have you seen a piece of me? Help me please?”
He was watching me from a distance ahead on my path holding one hand over his heart and something else in his other hand. He looks so familiar but a faded figure – a shade. I’d catch a glimpse of him and he’d quickly disappear around the bend. By the time I got there all I saw was an empty road less traveled. The man eluded me and I lose hope again. Why was he keeping me from me? Hadn’t life been cruel enough?
After all the chasing, I was exhausted. The stranger always seemed to be just minutes ahead in my future. I grew weary and stopped. I had to just take care of me right now. I sat and drank in self-care from the surroundings. I had made it pretty far already and, for the first time since the great shattering, I felt a smile. I sensed I wasn’t alone and I opened my eyes. There was the shadowed man holding the lost piece from my shattering. This was the first time I didn’t yell to him. I was still smiling. Slowly he came towards me. I still couldn’t “see” him. He knelt down and handed me the piece he kept safe – happiness.
“You’ve spent a lot of energy looking for something that was always close, Bryan.”
I looked up from my hands and finally saw him clearly. I was looking back at me…
