The canvas is laid bare, the soul unfurled, every vulnerable line etched with a hope so raw it stings. You placed yourself at the edge of the world, a lighthouse beaming, certain that the distant ships would turn, drawn by the honest light. You waited. And waited. The tide, an indifferent beast, ebbed and flowed, but no one came ashore.
Not with malice, no. Just with a busy blindness, a self-absorption that isn’t cruel, merely… full. Saturated by the ceaseless, glittering abundance of everything, everyone. How do you pierce that veil? How do you become the one whisper amidst the cacophony? How do you make them see? How do you make them care? And then the deeper, more haunting question echoes in the quiet: why does their caring feel like the very oxygen you need to breathe?
This yearning for validation, a phantom limb that aches with a thousand-year-old pain. To create more, to be free from the gnawing doubt, to just be in the flow… it feels tethered to their notice. Must you offer a piece of your soul, unwrapped and free, just to earn a glance? The state of “not yet there” is a constant, dull throb, a kind of slow, artistic death.
You tried, oh how you tried, rearranging the same few pieces, expecting a different game. The definition of madness, they say. But aren’t we all a little unhinged here, standing on the precipice of our own making, whispering to the wind?
Then, the shift. Not in the world, but within. A subtle re-tuning of the internal compass. The why dissolved, transforming into the pure, unadulterated because. The how became less about reaching outwards, and more about delving inwards. And suddenly, you are here. Not where you thought you needed to be, but precisely where you were always meant to arrive. The weight lifts, replaced by the buoyant, liberating truth of your own presence. Weightless. Finally.
Story and art by Damian Smith
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