Chapter 08 · 4 min 32 sec
It Was Already There
Recognition — looking back and seeing the love that was always present, just unnamed.
Lyrics· 334 words
I spent years chasing distant answers Across cities, oceans, and skies Believing somewhere beyond the horizon There was a truth I hadn't found I searched in books, I searched in people I searched in places I barely knew Always convinced the missing piece was waiting somewhere new
But every road I followed, every lesson I survived Kept leading me back to something I couldn't quite describe It was already there Beneath the noise, beneath the fear, beneath the years I thought I was searching for something rare But every answer I ever needed, it was already there I look for strength in distant mountains For wisdom in older names
For certainty in perfect plans For peace inside achievement I thought becoming someone Would finally make me whole Not knowing all along The missing map was written in my soul And every time life broke me, every time I lost my way Something quiet inside me still knew what to say
It was already there The light beneath the dark The hope beneath the scars The fire beneath the spark I thought I was finding what wasn't anywhere But every truth worth keeping, it was already there The love I was looking for Was hidden in familiar faces
The courage I was searching for Was born in the hardest places The home I missed Was never made of walls It lived inside the people Who answered when I called Maybe we spent half our lives searching And the other half understanding
Maybe the treasure was never buried Maybe we were standing on it all along It was already there In every lesson, in every fall In every hand that caught me When I thought I'd lost it all It was already there Before I knew its name
Waiting patiently inside me Through every loss and change And now I see The thing I spent my life pursuing Was walking beside me the whole time I wasn't finding anything
I was remembering What was already there
*A story about seeing what was always there*
The summer Beatriz turned thirteen, her family cleaned out the box under the stairs.
It was a large cardboard box, taped shut, that had been there so long no one remembered putting it there. Her father opened it and inside were photographs — hundreds of them, loose and slightly faded, from before Beatriz was born and from when she was too small to remember anything.
They spread them on the kitchen table.
There was one of her grandmother at a hospital, holding a very small baby. The baby was Beatriz. Her grandmother's face was turned not toward the camera but toward the baby, and the expression on it was something Beatriz had never seen in a photograph before — complete, uncomplicated joy.
There was another of her father outside her first school, carrying a backpack that was almost as big as she was. He was watching her go through the door, and his hand was still raised as if he'd just let go.
There was one of her mother at a swimming pool, standing at the edge while a small girl in orange floaties thrashed around nearby. Her mother was not watching the pool. She was watching the girl. Every muscle in her body, even in the photograph, looked ready.
"Is that me?" Beatriz asked.
"That's you," her mother said.
Beatriz studied all these photographs for a long time. They were ordinary moments, most of them — nothing dramatic, no celebrations she remembered, no holidays she could name. Just Tuesday afternoons and Saturday mornings and ordinary days that no one had expected to matter.
And yet there were hundreds of them. Hundreds of moments when someone had thought: *I want to remember this. I want to remember her.*
"I didn't know about these," Beatriz said quietly.
"They were always there," her father said. "Just waiting for you to be old enough to want to see them."
She looked at the photograph of her grandmother's face again — that unguarded, enormous love — and understood something she wouldn't be able to put into words until much later: that she had been loved her whole life, completely and constantly, and had simply not had the eyes to see it yet.
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*The love that has always been there is the easiest to miss — and the most important to find.*
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