Tonight, another visit from the ghost of a girl who was me

It is silly, in part, to long so deeply for something six years gone. For a feeling that once made me feel so... truly infinite. Alive. An email about the University of Newcastle, Ourimbah campus's 'Spring Scamble' (a running or walking event at my uni) awoke that old feeling of grief for an old love I've lost. Running. I'd love to participate in it, I don't get to participate in anything 'extra' at uni and while I'm mostly okay with that, there's so much else I'd love to do.

So tonight, I'm feeling trapped within my own body, longing for something I cannot have. Hard to comprehend how I once took it for granted.

& we dance, we dance in the rain

“You can’t sit around and wait for the storm to be over. You’ve got to learn how to dance in the rain.”

This quote is one of my favourites. Even when the storm becomes too much, a roaring force threatening to obliterate your last shread of hope, choose to dance in the rain. Dance in the streets, pyjamas and bare feet; dance by the ocean, twirling, laughing and shreaking as the wind lashes your face; dance until your legs can carry you no more. Just dance.

She breaks the silence

Late at night I hear her clearly. The old me in the back of my mind, crying out to be heard. She cries that this is not enough, cries for the things she loved so much. They are things long lost, abilities stolen, dreams shattered. She longs to run, to feel her feet pounding upon the earth; the power, the agility, the control to push her body to its limits.

She wishes things were different, for her life to be the way it could have been. She watches as her friends begin to graduate university, travel, get jobs, their full licences, and move out. It is a world that could have been her reality, but remains unknown.

I let go long ago, I accepted my new reality, my new normality. I learnt to love my life, find new loves, and build new dreams. But the old me, the girl I can never be again, is still there in the back of my mind, a ghost of the past, and in the silence I hear her. I hope I always will; she reminds me of how far I’ve come.

It's raining, it's pouring

“Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.”

There is something so comforting about the rain. I like that I can always count on the rain; no matter what happens, it will always keep raining. Maybe you know the feeling I’m talking about, maybe you don’t. But when I listen to the rain, the soothing sound against my window, I feel at peace. No worry can touch me when it is raining.

The wrong part, right place

Some days I feel like I’ve been given the wrong part, in the wrong play. It’s as if I am living a role written for someone else, a character that was never meant to be me, in a life that was never meant to be mine. Not mine, I mean, it can’t be mine - can it? I’ve travelled so far from the path I thought I’d be leading, they intersect, but are worlds apart. Yet maybe, maybe this is where I need to be. There’s no such thing as meant to be.

We dance on cliffs

The wind‘s souring all around me, a whirlwind entangling my hair, we’re laughing – arms stretched out wide. This is what it means to feel infinitely alive. The waves are crashing on the ledge below, beckoning dangerously, urging us to dare on closer, but they do not know that we are invincible. In this moment, nothing can bring us down, just two crazy girls dancing barefooted on the edge of a cliff.

Fragments and Butterflies

You know that something, that little something keeps you awake at night, there in the back of your mind, like a butterfly who flutters just out of reach when you grasp.

You start to wonder if its there at all, or nothing more than a figment of imagination. Is it important? You wonder. You wonder how something that isn't quite there, that continually slips away from your mind's eye, can feel of great importance. Important enough that you waste hours trying to reach it. Important enough that it keeps niggling at your concious, always there, but not quite.

My mind is made of fragments. I can come across as odd, when those fragments slip by the barrier between mind and reality. I say things that don't quite fit. They come out of nowhere, making little sense. Just fragments of thoughts that are in passing. I often confuse others.

I feel somewhat disconnected at times. Like there's a glass barrier between myself and reality. I see myself there, talking with others, but always apart. My body is there but my mind is up in the clouds, like I am watching myself from a birds eye view.

I wish I could put my finger on that something, then maybe my mind would find some rest.