The Backward Journey Home

It is a regressive sort of journey.
Searching for tracks, footsteps
where you wandered from this path to that,
a frustrating time, when what you want to be automatic,
is not,
where you began to lose things,
and where perhaps, you can find them again.

So far, you always have,
the backward journey illuminating
as you pass the glittering objects that seduced you,
or the wounds that distracted you,
the fascinating study of missteps,
a miracle perhaps that you have strayed so often,
abandoning one success for another, circling back,
a strange kind of discipline, forcing yourself
to be yourself.

Deep breath. Turn around. A complete lack of guilt,
happy for the sights
on the way to lostness. More glad still
for the backwards journey home.

About this poem.

Part of my therapy journey to wholeness was a journey back in time, looking for when and where I was last who and what I wanted to be, and then look for what led me off that path. It was a bit wrenching, to be honest. A year digging into fault and failure. Owning them. Clearing the path to the far better place I still live in today. Yep, wrenching.

But effective. It’s a tool I have used more than once since then. Evidently, I am a bit like a child. Easily distracted by shiny objects. But the ability to look back and discover “There! That’s where it began!” is huge, and do it without regrets, finger pointing (except at myself – that’s allowed within reason) is one of the most powerful tools in creating lives we want.

Lives that are wholly our own.

Tom