Why is it that we limit ourselves? We stay close to the familiar. We keep to ourselves. Why is that? Why is it that we don't take the opportunity of the open road? I want to fly! I want to run! I want to jump into the river and ride it all the way to mother sea. But I don't. Even my escape plan for the day--my chance to get away and have "me" time takes me only a few blocks away....but even as I am wanting to move...even as I frustratingly bang my fists on the metaphorical door, screaming to get out, to change, to be done...I can't. I won't. My feet do not move.

I am an island.

I told a friend today that I wished for love. Every day, at 11:11, I make a wish. I figure that, with all of those wishes floating around in the cosmos, one of them is bound to come true.
I've been thinking about that wish today. About love. About how and why I want it. About what it means.
But I know what it means. Because I have it. I can wish for it and wish for it...and it'll be like wishing for rain here in Oregon. It comes. I have it. It's not always raining...but that moisture is always there. There's always the residual. Always the effect.
I've wondered for a long time why I'm not loved. What is it about me that seems to distance myself? My own personal motto has turned into "boy did the poets ever get this wrong...man really can be his (or in my case, her) own island."
And maybe I am. Maybe I am an island. Floating there in the sea. Solitary. One to my own. But you know what that means? That means that, at night, I am the last one that to whom the sun grants his kiss. That means that I shine out on an ocean of sameness as one difference...one hope for human life. That means that, within the arms of my shores, I hold a world different from any other. That means that what and who I am is preserved--waiting and pleading and desiring to be discovered.
And love? Isn't that what love is? Hope for life. Hope for the good things in life. Hope for all those things that make us who we are?
I'm not unlovable, though I am alone. I have amazing friends and an amazing family. I have the love of those people who support me every day simply by being there when I call.
And maybe it's not everything...maybe it's not what I want. But it's something...something amazing. And for now? It's going to be enough. Because even though that island may be going through a time of drought and famine...it still represents that hope. And, someday, that hope will be mine.