There You Are

So much of life is spent in motion.

Forward.
Away.
Toward what is next.

Sometimes that movement comes from a sense of readiness.
And sometimes, if we are honest, it comes from the hope that if we keep going, we might not be required to fully meet what is.

That means the places may change, the relationships, the narratives may shift.

And yet:

Wherever you go, there you are.

We may learn, grow, expand our understandings as we gather new ways of seeing ourselves. And yet still, at some point, we find ourselves in the quiet resonance of being right there with ourselves.

We find what was thought to be left behind still present. Not as—something has gone wrong in the healing—but more as—not everything is asking to be left.

It is the finite difference between moving through something and moving away from it.

It’s: I cannot stay here.

VS:

What is here?

Not: How do I make this disappear?

Just—

What is here?

Maybe it is grief.
Maybe it is fear.
Maybe it is the story that has been carried so long it feels like identity.
Maybe it is a younger self still waiting, quietly, to be turned toward.

And we slowly begin to understand that this turning toward does not inherently mean going back, but rather being present enough to see what has been with us all along.

Here, we do not force ourselves into pain or hold things not yet ready for our hands. But there comes a time when distance within the self is no longer required.

The invitation is often unremarkable.

If only because there are pieces of the self that we look past, see through, and the cost of refusing to see is in the learning not to look.

In the mirror.

Because if we pause, if we breathe—

We notice.

That there we are.

Shaped. Maybe rattled. But there, finally meeting our own gaze.

There we are.

Perhaps healing is not becoming someone who has escaped what hurt, but holding our own hand as we work our way through it.

Not rushing to resolve ourselves. Recognizing that perhaps we are not something we need to fix. That maybe discomfort isn’t something wrong so much as something to be acknowledged.

We are something that deserves to be witnessed.
To be honored.

To reap the wisdom of our own lessons and perhaps mourn the version of us that had to do the learning.

And here we stand at the threshold of truth.

Of what has been avoided.
Perhaps buried.
And still—us.

There you are.

In the mirror.

Smile.