My Missing Puzzle Piece

Hello all,

Since I am stuck here in Tally with me, myself and I, I have had a lot of alone/downtime. When I am not working or doing random things like kayaking or sailing with random boys or saving turtles, I find myself obsessed over a puzzle I have been working on. My love for puzzles dates back to the year 2005 when Florida got hit with all those hurricanes. My hometown was completely drenched in an endless soak. Practically everywhere was flooded, including my dirt road. You see, dirt typically results in mud after it has been wet so there was no way I could leave my house for like a week. I was stuck inside going batshit crazy from not having the option to leave. I suppose I could have swam, and I definitely considered it once or twice because I soon grew bored from not having electricity or any of those 1st world luxuries that I tend to take for granted. The only thing that kept me sane and from not murdering my family (we were all beginning to drive each other nuts) was a collection of jigsaw puzzles I found in a random closet at my house. I did about 5 that week. They were huge too with way too many pieces, but I noticed that I was really good at them. I like finding things and putting them together for some reason. Now if only I could apply this to practical things like matching myself up with someone who is actually good for me.

But I noticed a trend when I do my puzzles. I am currently doing this 1500 piece old timey town scene and it is ridiculous with all the different colors and patterns of stone. I will sit there for minutes on end without finding a single match, which leads to a frustrated huff and the throwing of my hands up in surrender. But then, like a needle in a haystack, I find just one piece that is a match to something I may or may not have been looking to find. It is such a triumphant feeling too. Okay, yes, I AM A NERD!!! But most of y'all already know that from either personal interaction with me or by reading this blog. The trend follows this one little insignificant piece. I'll spend so much time just finding one, but then I will find a whole slew of them. Match after match after match. Everything begins to fall into place with this one little piece of painted cardboard. The more I find, the prettier the view is in front of me as the picture reveals itself.

As I sat there finding piece after piece, I somehow had an epiphany. Life is sort of like a puzzle. Ever notice how everything goes straight to crap all at once? Like everything goes wrong from the first breath you take when you wake up and swallow the air wrong causing you to start choking, all the way through the afternoon when you lose your keys on campus and into the night when you burn your hand taking your bowl of Beefaroni out of the microwave. Those are the days where you just want to crawl back into bed and try again tomorrow. That's what I told my little Kinley this past weekend when she woke up already raising hell about her toe, her being cold and thirsty, and completely un-pleasable all at the same time. I said, "Whooooh child we are gonna put you back to bed and you can start over again tomorrow." She replied with an ugly pout and another protest against the fan.

We all go through a phase of bad luck Chuck where everything seems to go wrong. You are all in a funk and you feel like nothing is showing up right, in a timely manner, or not at all. But then suddenly, something happens that makes your life do a 360. It's like finding that one piece of the puzzle. You find something, do something, meet someone, say something, or whatever and all of a sudden everything starts falling into place again. The sky scene that was once a gaping black hole is now the brightest blue. The hardest part is just finding that one piece.

The whole thing I am trying to say is that life is seriously the biggest, most crazy puzzle to figure out. It takes a minute to find that one piece that will set unveiling the full picture, and you may have to go through a lot of pondering and trying to find it, but that minute is just a minute in comparison to what it will lead you to discover. Don't stop looking for that piece. After all, "Life is a maze, and love is a riddle." You'll never find what you need to complete your own puzzle without opening your mind and your heart. Don't stop looking for that diamond in the rough. It is out there, I promise. And then everything, when you least expect it, will suddenly make sense. The picture will be clear and you will understand why everything happened like it did.

*Here's to finding that piece.*