It smells like rain. The air and gravel are deeply permeated, my legs are slightly damp and muggy. I keep thinking about the letters I want to write myself. Rainy letters with curled edges, things I keep forgetting. Oh, the things I keep forgetting. Tattoos are needed.
I will never quit searching. My passport will never be stamped enough, my mouth will always yearn for more water. I think people will quench me. "Fill me," my insides scream. "Fill me up, I'm emptying." My thirst is never quenched. I open my lips to taste this rain and it flows through me, spurting out of my fingers and toes, and I remain dry. Thirsty.
How do I measure my worth? I take scraps of myself and rip the seams away, folding it neatly, tying a ribbon, a lopsided bow. I hand it to the person. I want them to understand. Don't they see me? They try -- I honestly think they try -- but they're human too, and they're trying to quench their own thirst, fill their own empty places.
So here I am: left giving my worth away.
I am remarkably unsatisfied. Drastically disappointed with the way people don't understand my most innate needs. I keep on thinking it will work this time. It never has.
I am thirsty and dry and unquenched and giving my worth away. And now, I am finished. It is time to wrench my worth back from the hands that are searching for their own desires, time to stitch my worth back onto my fragmented limbs and bones. I am recognizing it is long past time to reclaim my worth as my own.
It's raining now. The smell is overwhelming and I stand outside and taste it between my lips. It doesn't quench me, but I'm aware of who will. It cleanses my pores though, disinfects the bloody mess I've made from sewing my worth back on.
So I stand in the rain, still searching, always searching, and I clutch my worth tight against my battered chest, and I know who I am, and I'm learning who God is, and I'm done giving my worth away.