Recently the exile ended. It's been a long six or seven years. How many people can I now not find? How many, loved, and lost? "Hic jacet..." ...quis?
In retrospect I was, like my new moniker, quite quixotic about it all. I foolishly thought that in trying to satisfy my own desires to find the truth, nay Truth, that I wouldn't change. I became hard and brittle, exploring extremes and alienating others without realising.
This Lent had been full of good intentions, but they were hardly me. They were artificial, superimposed onto a me that had become as vulnerable as a small child. So I stopped, refusing to cooperate with the imposter "me". And as a butterfly might be, if it had but a chance to be reincarnated as the caterpillar it once was, I found a new me. Or, rather an old me, crestfallen and worn by the passage of the years.
Today I found some old photos. They brought a tear to my eye. At thirty-three I'm still the same as the bright-eyed twenty-two year-old I was then. Still as daft, but with egg on my face to prove it.
To those I have loved and lost: I'm sorry. I still love you all, though the sundering seas (of time) be between us.