A place where I want to be

I’m struggling to find my path in life right now.

I want to find a place where I want to be when I grow up.

I used to have it when I was a child,

though it wasn’t a place, it was a feeling.

Overwhelming, yet calm, wild yet safe…

it made me truly present in the moment, alive.

I’m trying to find that special feeling,

The feeling that I had when I was there.

I sometimes find a glimpse of it in calm forest walks, in smelling, grown fields, in my grandmothers cooking, in salty water by the sea,

yet it always flies away, slips through the cracks of duties and what ifs.

It gets crushed by norms that fold me into different boxes just so that they can fit me on the shelves of perfection,

among the rest of my people.

I now know what that feeling was, it was freedom.

Something I have to search for deep in my heart.

Only I can break what is holding me back.