The needle in the need...
You spend your whole life waiting, searching, for...something, anything. Did you think it was just you? Persistently scouring. Looking for the answers to unknown questions as if truth was something hidden beneath the couch cushions. Did you think that my life hasn't been devoted to the same vague pursuit? Both hands plunged into unseeing spaces. Feeling between the recesses of lost things. Finding nothing satisfactory. The dust and the crumbs. The remnants of the hunger. A life lived lingering and deferred.
Did you think you were the only one who comes up empty? You're not. Believe me.
We tell ourselves that we're just one discovery, one uncovering, one goal, one task, one accomplishment, one thing, away from happiness, from contentment, from satisfaction, from rest, from peace. But it never comes, never arrives. We never meet the need.
Did you really think you would? Not if you ask me.
Not even when we think we've done it. That we've got it. That we've finally managed to get our hands on that certain missing something. The metallic jingle of something quantifiable. Something with meaning and value, an official stamp and a standardized weight. The change we cling to and lose.
We might keep it close. We might swear to never let it go. Until we count it up, decide it doesn't amount to much, and it slips back into the crevices from where it came. All the while the wounds have only widened. The lack refuses to be replete.
Did you think that dependence wouldn't lead to withdrawal? Say what you will, but the hole in you recognizes the hole in me.
That's the funny thing about real life, isn't it? We're either always denied the things we want or discovering that we never really wanted them at all. Did you think it wasn't true? You can tell me I'm wrong, but you know it too.
It's not the things we want that harm us. It's the way we want them. The way we hold the wanting. The grip around the absence. The needle in the need.
Did you think you could know stillness when you're never at rest? That you could be sated by only feeding the vacancy? I used to think so too...