I find myself accepting how difficult it is to collect my feelings on paper.

I am staring at my wall.

I look out of my window; my elbows on the sill,

palms inward on my warm cheeks.

My view of the lake is hindered by some houses, a few trees. I begin to wonder what my view would look like

without the houses, without the trees.

Immediately I become stricken with a realization.

The houses are a home for someone; just as the four walls I am contained within keep me, at home.

The trees were grown for beauty.

The trees represent strength, life.

Where would I be without strength?

You know, the trees really stirred my mind.

I started to wonder. I wondered how that individual tree stood tall through every storm.

In all reality it has been standing since I have lived here and probably decades before my time and perhaps before my parents' time.

That tree has been through more storms and changes that I have. Trees have been torn down beside it, it may have even lost its own branches.

I think deeper.

I have lost pieces of myself along the way. I have lost people around me along the way. I have been the only one standing.

And all I can think of is how the tree outside my window survives...

 

When the wind blows, it goes with the wind. It never fights back, it never refuses. And when it loses a branch or two?

It grows them back. It might take a year, but it always regrows.

 

I had never envisioned myself as someone who would take advice from a tree.

However, I refuse to discredit my discovery because the amount of inspiration left all around us to pick us back up is uncanny.

I know that trees might represent something else to someone different, but it caused an epiphany to hang itself over me.

If only we would clear the cloudiness from the storm out of our eyes, we would learn to grow new branches in new directions for new beginnings. //