returning.

A return to what was will likely never happen, and perhaps it is a good thing. In time, it has become increasingly clear that the scars and empty chasms that have birthed itself from the isolation, continue to change the trajectories of lives in the days and months to come. I am reminded of the uprooted nature of being, and becoming, which themselves in the last little while, of the things that matter, and the things perhaps don’t matter as much as we would have wanted them to begin with. A new lease in perspective, understanding, and experiencing, of a complicated human existence.

There will always be lessons fought and etched within the past couple of months, that will never go away. Like a traumatic bond of first grief, the things we will continue to unpack and unwind in the years and decades to come. I have always been inclined to believe that it is only through the very worst of ourselves that we can truly understand the very best of ourselves. That our lofty goals or expectations mean naught and second to survivorship, and the ability to endure to the next day, and the weeks to come. Perhaps it has taken quiet moments of selfishness and indifference to hold things in a different light. To see, in privilege, the spaces and lenses the world sees itself within; a feedback-loop of opinion, truth and fact. As if watching as a wallflower, a kaleidoscope of colour collapse just as society has grown to collapse as many look inward, after years of looking out.

In perhaps holding space for nothing and everything at the same time, I have perhaps grown to cultivate a long draught against grief that I know sooner than later will need to come to an end, which in gratitude, has shown me that perspective sometimes is all that is needed. To redefine the distance we hope to create with the world around us, takes courage and discomfort. Distance, that through the eyes of a traumatic experience is enough to create and spell out a lens we choose to see the things we wish to see, or ignore those which are all too convenient for us to ignore. Maybe now begins the quiet retreat, that in the return, new images form and take shape. New beginnings hold new weight in fruit; of joy, sorrow and everything in between. That within the returning, is not so much a returning, but a becoming. Not a continuation nor a do over, but an awakening to things we wish to keep forgotten, and the forgotten we no longer wish to turn ourselves away from.