Familiarity (Written several years ago)

The sun settles in for the night behind me as I listen to the silence. Before, the surroundings were full of light, life and sound. The voice in my head is mute. My soul still, my heart quiet. The bubbling brook's roaring flow has dimmed to a rumble as if to ready for the night. I look calm, placid, you'd never guess the rolling emotion I feel inside me. I wish I were at peace, that's always seemed to elude me. I've never decided if I seek peace because I've never had it or if the peace is seeking me because it senses it's need in me. As the day pushes on, I fear it shall escape me again.

I don't like losing. I can't remember a time that I have been defeated, yet, I feel like I'm losing something important in my life. I wish I could put a finger on it. Somehow pinpoint the exact thing I'm letting slip away from me. I know what mourning feels like and that is how this seems. Like something is dying and I can't revive it. A need, a desire, a want I will miss so terribly it is even hard to put it to word. It's as though my heart is melting and in it's place dwells a deep, sullen pool of sunken memories.

A broken bridge is all that's available to leave the pain behind. Does it lead to the peace that I seek or is it another dead-end to a sadness that seems to overwhelm me of late. Is this the crossroads I've heard about? The turning point that you either take the left or the right, one leading to bliss and the other to isolation? Is it the stillness that wraps around me now? Perhaps I've already taken the path and this is the result.

Braving the darkness around me, I take a peek off the bridge into the churning, cool waters below. The stones challenging the smooth flow of the current as it bends and rolls it's way home, instinctively knowing the way to it's destination. Maybe we are like the waters that flow over the river bottoms, smoothing the rocks by day after day after day of doing what we were intended to do until we mold the world around us to fit. What is to "fit" me? Will I know it when I see it? Do I already have it? Is that what I'm losing now? The peace I'm lacking, is it in my grasp?