A year and a half ago or more, I began to write a poem filled with a grand collection of ironies to display the struggle of loneliness in a world of hundreds of friends. It is entitled Alone Together and remains unfinished and unreleased until I can find at last the perfect arrangement of words for the final verse, which may very well never happen. In this poem, however, resides one line that I feel compelled to make public now that I have come to a certain realization.
Oftentimes, I feel and have felt for years a sense of incompleteness in my abilities. I love to write and am frequently told that I have a gift in the activity, but many say my writing style is far too verbose and elongated to be of use to others. I love music and have been involved with it in public group activities for years, yet most persons find my individual and personal musical creations to be harsh on the ears or simply bland. I love to read, but I hardly can ever bring myself to finish a book that I have started. An A/B student nearly my entire life, I find myself a high school dropout. I could list myriads more examples of how I seem to lack a certain wholeness in my efforts.
Some of these points are results of choices I have made in my past; others stand on their own. Regardless, I feel quite often like a multitude of puzzle pieces that cannot fit entirely together—many handfuls, each a small portion from a different box. Sometimes I embrace this, while oftentimes I am ashamed or embarrassed of it. And though I know I am made whole in Christ, adopted as a literal son of the Creator of all, convincing myself that my deficiencies and inadequacies are in reality many beautiful shards of a shattered mirror reflecting the ultimate Beauty remains my daily struggle. It remains my fight.
It is my story, my song, my chapter in this grand epic called Life. I am no master at any art, but at least I can say that I am a plenitude reflections of art perfected.
