~ bullseyes and stones ~
Sometimes it feels like I'm pulling ghosts out of hats like rabbits. Their presence remains, but this time it feels different, I feel haunted by newly spawned ghosts.
The most annoying ghost asking 'have the goals bullseye moved?` Or wondering has fitting in with familiar strangers made the bullseye blend in or maybe just become blurry?
Now I can't help but think that intoxication made us similar.
The persecuting ghost returned. For once, it isn't chasing me; it's lingering among the fragments created to protect me. The prosecutions sit plastered on—layer upon layer of judgment and carefully rehearsed contentment.
But tonight, I realized it wasn't the bullseye that kept moving away. It was me. I moved away, backwards.
I tried to carry my thoughts well, even while ghosts tormented me constantly. Standing with my hands resting in my pockets, thinking about how to unmask the soft and raw glimmer side of me.
I felt something. Excited. Finally. Here it is. The diamond in the rough. Something worth wanting. Something worth working toward. Something worth aiming for. It turns out that the diamonds revealed dusty, hardened stones. Their weight felt like punishment, as though regret were a debt that could be paid in full if only I suffocated enough beneath it.
The burden feels familiar now—almost comforting—as if I deserved it, believing my suffocating thoughts could somehow repay what was lost.
Even so, through the burden of carrying these stones everywhere, beneath the scarred layers, there is still hope. Dreams of simple, meaningful things: A place to belong. A life filled with purpose. A person to share ordinary moments with. Not an obsession. Not possession. Just small, sweet nothings.
I don't want to carry longing forever. Steady love that can endure rawness, silence, and time. I crave hitting the bullseye.
Finding the healed parts of myself that survived every careless judgment, and learning from the broken fragments that now form a perfectly imperfect mirror.
So today, I find peace in the stones.
Remembering my own miniature Stonehenge—secret victories won, my version of David and Goliath. We all have a version of David's story. Five stones waiting to be launched. But not at familiar strangers. I'm choosing to launch it at the walls of excuses. At the relentless ghosts hiding in the shadows. And then I have 3 left, all aimed at a single target.
For the first time... Hitting the bullseye that shatters all fears.
