Hope part II

I feel better. Reasons are hard to peg. I have good friends. I am thankful for them. I can tell them where i am and not have to endure self-help book advice. They are silent. They nod. They pray for me. These are good friends. Good people to have around.

I feel better about the House. Cautiously. Maybe, in one small corner of the universe, something is starting to go right. A tiny Something good just might be starting to happen.

I feel better about me. Things that used to tear me apart, bother me a lot less. I can even think they're cute. This is significant progress, and makes certain important relationships in my life a whole lot more relaxed. Almost like getting friends back, or making entirely new ones.

A great deal of ambiguity surrounds one other thing i might have to feel better about. Though hints, allegations and things left unsaid, and potential, nay, expected dissapointments can introduce a fair bit of anxiety into life, somehow, regardless of where it all comes down, it still feels good.

Parentage

I had lunch with my dad today. Somehow, I tend to forget what a great guy he is. I remember a time when I would have accepted any conceivable fate so long as it didn't involve me turning out like my father. Now? I don't know. There are elements of who he is that i could stand to be. Some elements, of course, i could learn from and and hopefully avoid - and I imagine he hopes i will also. I can, however, imagine worse fates than being the person he is now.

Just wish i could relax and live once in a while.

Shema

You who live secure

In your warm houses,

Who return at evening to find

Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider whether this is a man,

Who labours in the mud

Who knows no peace

Who fights for a crust of bread

Who dies at a yes or a no.

Consider whether this is a woman,

Without hair or name

With no more strength to remember

Eyes empty and womb cold

As a frog in winter.

Consider that this has been:

I commend these words to you.

Engrave them on your hearts

When you are in your house, when you walk on your way,

When you go to bed, when you rise.

Repeat them to your children

Or may your house crumble,

Disease render you powerless,

Your offspring avert their faces from you.

Primo Levi (trans. Ruth Feldmann)

Like one who takes away a garment a cold day,
or like vinegar poured on soda,
Is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.

Proverbs 25:20


Take that! Let me have my misery if i want it, dammit!
I'm sorry...I do appreciate the concern. But sometimes a guy's just gotta be sad. Having to try and defend or explain it doesn't help. If you want to make me feel better, just being quiet with me for a moment and watching the snow is perfectly accceptable approach.

No harm done, i hope.

But next time you try to cheer me up...try not to leave bruises.

" And the rent is too high living here between reasons to live..."

You can wake up on a sunny morning, feeling better than you have in months. You can spend your morning classes in a pleasant peace. You can walk in the sun, hearing laughter, enjoying warm air on jacket-less skin, looking forward to enjoying the relaxing company of a good friend. You can, maybe for one of the first times in a pretty long while, be feeling almost ok about things, about your life, about what surrounds you, about the aches of the past and the unknowns of the future.

And in less than ten minutes, you can find yourself saying just about the worst thing that could possibly come out of your mouth. The meanest, coldest, bitterest thought that ever oozed along the sludgy bottom of your brain during your blackest moments somehow finds its way to your tongue.

And suddenly, you're back there, exposed, in all your full-blown ugly, and that wound, which seemed just about to start healing over, is ripped wide open all over again.

And then you're outside, damage done, wondering where the hell it all came from. And if you you'll ever be free of it. If you'll ever get to that place where it isn't there, lurking, waiting for even the tiniest trigger to force itself in, plough under all your good intentions, put the lie to all your efforts to "do the right thing" and have you thrashing and spitting, lashing out at the nearest loved one like a wounded animal.

The past does not cease to exist because we wish it away. We cannot simply chose the version of it we like best, seal it in memory like a time capsule, and move on. It remains. And as much as we'd like to think we can choose a moment to cut it off, and then manufacture our present and future into what we'd prefer them to be, we don't escape what has been.
Even to the degree that we may seem to succeed in making fate our slave, our past remains. It inhabits us in shadows and continuing threads. We react against it, reconstrue it moment by monent, we unknowingly mimic and repeat . But is there. We are what we are because it was.
We try to twist it to fit while it is busy twisting us.

That is to say, we are not, and will never be, fully "grown up".

SIGH.

Interpret that as you will.

Hmm. THAT was interesting. I'm not sure if i know what I'm doing, or if i should be doing what i am. I'm not sure if i even know where i'm going with this. Nevertheless, it sure beats sitting at home and contemplating...well, what i have to contemplate.

AND i got some frickin' amazing Chinese food. Life could be worse.