Drops That Long to Be: A Journey Toward Wholeness

There are moments in life when everything we thought we knew about ourselves begins to shift — moments when belonging, love, identity, and purpose are no longer simple words, but deep rivers we are called to cross.

For me, that journey has been both personal and artistic.

I grew up between cultures, between expectations, between ways of being. Migration was not only a physical crossing but an emotional one — carrying my dreams, my fears, my language, and my silences into spaces where sometimes I was seen, and other times misunderstood. In those crossings, I learned that love doesn't wear a single face. Grief doesn't have one path. Laughter and sorrow bloom differently for each soul.

Art became my bridge. It became my way of translating emotions that didn’t always find room in words. Every painting, every sculpture, every project like El ArteFlame and The Heart Series has been a piece of this journey — an act of searching for meaning, a drop longing to return to the sea.

Through my work, I’ve learned not to seek perfection, not to erase my scars, and not to fear my fire. I've learned that to be whole is to embrace both the light and the shadows within me. It is to stay open — even when the world teaches you to shrink. Even when the fear of rejection tempts you to hide your true self.

Drops That Long to Be is not just a poem; it is a map of this path I walk every day — a reminder that in every moment of feeling lost, there is also a call to come home, to return to our essence, and to trust that we are part of something much greater than ourselves.

I share it with you now, as an offering of my heart and my journey:

Drops That Long to Be

by Edwin Gil
(From The Heart Series & El ArteFlame)

When I arrived, I understood:
there is no single way to love,
no single way to grieve.
Each soul laughs in its own language,
each embrace grows from its own root,
and every silence carries its own memory.

To move between cultures
is to drift through unknown seas,
where emotions don’t always rise to the surface,
where one word may heal—
or awaken what once was buried.

I’ve felt the anxiety
of not recognizing myself in others’ eyes,
of wanting only to be
without the fear of rejection,
without needing to explain my fire.

I don’t seek perfection,
nor promises carved in stone.
I simply wish to find someone
who sees my tired sunrises
and stays for the dusk,
unafraid of my shadows,
unwilling to dim my light.

We live in a world
that teaches us to be less
when we came to be more.
And still, here I am,
searching for meaning
in every drop that fades.

Because perhaps, in the end,
as the monk once said,
we are only drops of the sea:
we struggle, we feel, we lose our way…
and then—we return.
We return to the whole.
And in that whole,
we finally rest.