and i still have hope of finding something once lost

I don't usually write things as they are. I usually write as they should be, or how I wish they would be. Thus I feel safe when I write. I can be as free as only my wishful thinking is capable of, and not feel like I am being silly. My feet don't hurt as much anymore. They did, when I was young, though. I was always buying pretty little shoes that didn't fit quite right. I know this idea may seem juvenile now, but back then I felt that I understood something, the moment I stopped buying pretty shoes because I felt ridiculous in them, because the cost of beauty was no longer worth the effort. I would see women on the public bus, older women, working women, and I would wonder if any of them were loved, if they were cherished by another, if they knew it, if they were alone, if they were scared of being alone, if their bones were tired, if their smiles would give me more insight into any of these thoughts. And my judgment of them had always rested on this simple idea of beauty, this idea that if a woman wasn't striving, then she wasn't worth anyone's affection - maybe that's who God is. I've been told that that's who he is, someone who doesn't require you to strive, someone who will give you affection because he made you into who you are. But that was never enough validation for me. I have always wanted to be admired for my efforts, not my lack of them. Sometimes I think my emotions are threadbare and as old as I am, I am still a fish trying to breathe on land, a small child who thinks she knows something, if not everything. I saw a man on the bus, with a head shaved down to the scalp, wearing a striped sweater, one that you can't find anywhere except on a person who has lived through a past greater than most young people these days. And he had rested his left elbow on the seat next to him, his hand stretched out before him, and he was looking down at it, flexing the muscles on his hand, gripping his fingers and then relaxing them, and then he did something even more astonishing. He took his right hand and began stroking the other with it, feeling the bones, the fingernails, clasping it, unclasping it. He was treating his left hand like he had never seen it before, like it was a separate entity, something he hadn't used everyday. And I thought, maybe that is what heaven is, a place where everything you had becomes familiar with is made new, where things are genuinely reintroduced, like when you're first born, except you are equipped with enough complexity that you can actually appreciate the novelty of new things.