| hope and fear |
[Apr. 16th, 2009|07:05 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | hole--celebrity skin | ] |
Spring is such a strange time. The memories, feelings that hit me tend to be very strong. I suppose that’s true of other seasons--autumn, for sure--but spring is different, the sadness blends with a joy, a sense of rebirth. Autumn is bittersweet, spring is more gentle. Not that I feel particularly “gentle” emotionally after the last couple of weeks, but even through all of that, I can still feel the fragile sunlight that spring lets occasionally filter through.
One spring I was kicked out of my home. The following I lived in my little 1973 green Ford pickup for awhile, just a couple of books, notebooks and an already battered Nevermind cassette (which I still have.) Those days, so far away now, shaped me. Driving home today (yeah, I think a lot during my commute. It’s the only time I’m ever alone.) I contrasted those feelings (or more precisely, my memories of them) with the feelings I have currently--the stress, the uncertainty, the hope, the fear.
I suppose what hit me was the hope, and the fear. Because those suckers are always present. Hope, I guess it’s something I frequently lose for large swaths of time, but if you don’t give up, then you can’t be said to lose hope, even if it feels like it. Fear is, of course, constant. Learning to deal with fear is I think the most difficult task of “growing up” and facing the difference between your reality and your dreams and the gap between. Losing my mind, as I did when I briefly wound up in the hospital all those years ago, was probably the most important thing to happen to me in terms of learning to deal with fear. Once you’ve lost your mental stability--for honest to gosh reals lost it, the calm voice in the center that is your equilibrium gone and you can’t process the most simple thought patterns--you never feel entirely safe again, no matter how well you recover. If you are going to build a fulfilling life, you have to confront that knowledge, learn how to deal with it without letting it rule you.
I had an odd IM exchange today. A friend referred to it getting almost too sunny to listen to a particular band. I joked, “Well, it’s always dark in my head, so no worries.” His reply was “Yes, that is true of you.” Whereas my comment was offhand and joking, his response caught me off guard. You can’t infer emotion from IM very well, but I still wondered: is that really what folks think of me, in all seriousness? That it’s always dark and raining inside? Because it’s not. I am, at times, overwhelmed by light, by joy and beauty. The darkness is part of me, yes, and it will never leave…but the light gets in too, and the light brings balance, brings me hope even when I’m trapped in the alley. Perhaps the most graceful blessing of getting older is that when I completely lose that light, when the dark fully has me, some part of me knows to just ride it out, that things will balance back out. I will never lose the nagging doubt that I might just fall into that void one day, but I succumb to the fear of that happening less. Like a lot of things, it’s probably out of my control. I’d like to think if I just try to be a good person, good things will happen. Life is more complex than that, for sure, but what you project is what you are asking to get back.
While I’m alive, I’m gonna fucking be alive. And when the time comes to go through that door, I will go through with my head looking up, my eyes full of wonder. |
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