keep looking up

I am searching for something.

I wish it was simple enough to sum up into a single noun. It's something I didn't even realize I had lost somewhere along the way, until it was too late. And now I'm desperately searching. It's been so long that I'm questioning whether or not I really had it in the first place.

It's summer. It's a gorgeous, starry night. The windows are open, and the cool breeze dances across my face as I lie in bed. I've just come back from the most incredible weekend. It was full of joy, and laughter, and new friends. As I lay there, clutching the familiar circle of beads, listening to a song that takes me back to that night- that pinnacle of everything, complete LOVE... at fourteen years old, I wonder if life could possibly be any more wonderfully complete.

Three weeks later, Kel died. All thoughts of peace and happiness flew out the window when the phone rang that afternoon. And seven years later, I am still standing at the bottom somewhere.

So I guess what it is that I'm searching for is a way back. Not a way into the past, but a way to bring those feelings into my future. Because sometimes I question if I even have a future, unless I can find that peace and completeness. With myself, with my life, with my faith. I feel as though that night seven years ago, listening to that song, I still possessed some sort of blissful innocence about the world. In a way, once I had to face that loss, and all of the painful losses since... I also lost that innocence. And I've seen enough of life to know that innocence lost does not return. But I also know that I can find that peace and joy and love again, and I will, if it is the last thing I do. I will find what I am searching for.

Maybe this makes no sense to you. I guess it's more of an internal dialogue that a substantial blog, but this is all that is on my mind right now. To write anything else doesn't feel true. Forgive me.