The Good Way
I'm giving myself the next 55 minutes to do this since it's been so long and I seem to have a lot running through my head. I should be working being that I am at work, but I've done enough for the day, if you ask me.
With my recent purchase of an Xbox 360 and the sudden desire to start back at the beginning of certain things, I found that my mind was in the kind of mood to be philosophical, allegorical and dorky, because I must have thought for a good hour or so how one could go about finding Life's Reset button. I imagined this huge rounded, rectangular, and red button about the size of one's forearm, sitting right in the middle of this huge, gray, plastic box. You push it, and suddenly you're back one year ago. You remember everything, and so, you know what you did wrong, what you'd like to fix, what you'd like to do differently, and you have a second shot.
You get a do-over, and your hindsight bias makes everything seem so elementary.
So, I thought about how to get things back, and I came up with nothing. Apparently there is no such thing as backtracking in real life. Gone is gone is gone.
But is it?
What do I feel anymore? I purposely haven't thought about so much in so long, and now, that I've been pushed back into this frame of mind, it all feels so foreign and barren and different. It's like a garden I neglected and let go to waste. A wasteland where flourishing love and emotion used to run rampant. I find broken pieces of a dying heart laying scattered amongst the cracked earth and ash. I pick it up and cut myself on one of the sharp edges. I watch as the blood trickles down my palm and the jagged shard of dead, cardiac tissue. It starts to pulsate in my palm, soaking up my own blood, but with each beat it tears deeper into my flesh, growing hungrier for life. I cry out in pain as my own heart eats away at my body. This is a piece I once loved, a piece that was so important to me, but now I find it on the brink of death. I can save it, and watch it devour me once again. Or I can discard it, put it back where it was.
I fling the shard as far as I can, and I watch as it flies through the air to land safely on a patch of new, fresh soil. I rush over, but it's already taken root now. It's growing, breathing again from the blood I shed. Two buds begin to form. The first one opens to reveal a memory I had chosen to forget. Between the folds of the black and crinkled petals I can see myself curled into a tiny ball on my bed, crying as my mind processes the true meaning of the word "empty". I go to pluck the hideous weed from the ground just as the second bulb bursts to life. Suddenly, between the pollen drenched, pink petals of this new flower, I see my hand and his, intertwined, together as one. The sight of this stops me from destroying the new growth that has sprouted from the past, because I know it's impossible for one to live on without the other. I decide to let the broken shard of love grow, if only for a moment to remember how I got to be exactly where I am right now.
This past Thanksgiving I wanted to make a speech to everyone at our incredibly awkward dinner that I was thankful for my faults and that everyone should be, because just like our attributes, talents, and successes, our faults help to bring us to where we are. They are a part of who we are, a beautiful part, a necessary part. I never made that speech, because the events of the previous few days had already made that evening heavy and full of introspective thought.
During Christmas I tried to focus on family and friends as much as possible, but when the time came around, I found it hard to recognize some members of my family and even harder to recognize many of my friends. I wondered what we all had become, and I wondered if our faults were to blame.
New Years came, and I found myself feeling different than I had imagined. I had managed to avoid feelings as I had dreaded I might feel at the end of a year of great loss and great trial. Regret barely showed it's ugly face that day, at least for me, but I received word that it had set up camp in others' hearts and minds. I listened to them apologize, and waited for a sign of a new leaf that would never blossom. Apologies are so empty by themselves. I don't know why people find just an apology to be so hard. I've found the apology is the easy part. Making people notice a difference is the hard part.
Now I think about what differences I'd like to see this year, but all I come up with are ideas about things that are so completely out of my control. I can't change fate, and I can't change the past. There is no Reset button, and no matter what, I'm stuck with the remnants of a broken year.
We throw our parties.
We have our fun.
We all pretend
that it's us who won.
But in the end
when it's all done,
we look around
and find we're the only one.
I tried my hardest to make the best of last year, to make the best of everything I was given, and in the end I'm not completely sure of what I have to show for that. I don't know if I can call last year a failure, a success, a horrible mistake, or the perfect choice, but most likely it's just all of the above. I want this year to be different in a good way. Right now it's just different. I'm still looking for the good way.
signed = faultytext
With my recent purchase of an Xbox 360 and the sudden desire to start back at the beginning of certain things, I found that my mind was in the kind of mood to be philosophical, allegorical and dorky, because I must have thought for a good hour or so how one could go about finding Life's Reset button. I imagined this huge rounded, rectangular, and red button about the size of one's forearm, sitting right in the middle of this huge, gray, plastic box. You push it, and suddenly you're back one year ago. You remember everything, and so, you know what you did wrong, what you'd like to fix, what you'd like to do differently, and you have a second shot.
You get a do-over, and your hindsight bias makes everything seem so elementary.
So, I thought about how to get things back, and I came up with nothing. Apparently there is no such thing as backtracking in real life. Gone is gone is gone.
But is it?
What do I feel anymore? I purposely haven't thought about so much in so long, and now, that I've been pushed back into this frame of mind, it all feels so foreign and barren and different. It's like a garden I neglected and let go to waste. A wasteland where flourishing love and emotion used to run rampant. I find broken pieces of a dying heart laying scattered amongst the cracked earth and ash. I pick it up and cut myself on one of the sharp edges. I watch as the blood trickles down my palm and the jagged shard of dead, cardiac tissue. It starts to pulsate in my palm, soaking up my own blood, but with each beat it tears deeper into my flesh, growing hungrier for life. I cry out in pain as my own heart eats away at my body. This is a piece I once loved, a piece that was so important to me, but now I find it on the brink of death. I can save it, and watch it devour me once again. Or I can discard it, put it back where it was.
I fling the shard as far as I can, and I watch as it flies through the air to land safely on a patch of new, fresh soil. I rush over, but it's already taken root now. It's growing, breathing again from the blood I shed. Two buds begin to form. The first one opens to reveal a memory I had chosen to forget. Between the folds of the black and crinkled petals I can see myself curled into a tiny ball on my bed, crying as my mind processes the true meaning of the word "empty". I go to pluck the hideous weed from the ground just as the second bulb bursts to life. Suddenly, between the pollen drenched, pink petals of this new flower, I see my hand and his, intertwined, together as one. The sight of this stops me from destroying the new growth that has sprouted from the past, because I know it's impossible for one to live on without the other. I decide to let the broken shard of love grow, if only for a moment to remember how I got to be exactly where I am right now.
This past Thanksgiving I wanted to make a speech to everyone at our incredibly awkward dinner that I was thankful for my faults and that everyone should be, because just like our attributes, talents, and successes, our faults help to bring us to where we are. They are a part of who we are, a beautiful part, a necessary part. I never made that speech, because the events of the previous few days had already made that evening heavy and full of introspective thought.
During Christmas I tried to focus on family and friends as much as possible, but when the time came around, I found it hard to recognize some members of my family and even harder to recognize many of my friends. I wondered what we all had become, and I wondered if our faults were to blame.
New Years came, and I found myself feeling different than I had imagined. I had managed to avoid feelings as I had dreaded I might feel at the end of a year of great loss and great trial. Regret barely showed it's ugly face that day, at least for me, but I received word that it had set up camp in others' hearts and minds. I listened to them apologize, and waited for a sign of a new leaf that would never blossom. Apologies are so empty by themselves. I don't know why people find just an apology to be so hard. I've found the apology is the easy part. Making people notice a difference is the hard part.
Now I think about what differences I'd like to see this year, but all I come up with are ideas about things that are so completely out of my control. I can't change fate, and I can't change the past. There is no Reset button, and no matter what, I'm stuck with the remnants of a broken year.
We throw our parties.
We have our fun.
We all pretend
that it's us who won.
But in the end
when it's all done,
we look around
and find we're the only one.
I tried my hardest to make the best of last year, to make the best of everything I was given, and in the end I'm not completely sure of what I have to show for that. I don't know if I can call last year a failure, a success, a horrible mistake, or the perfect choice, but most likely it's just all of the above. I want this year to be different in a good way. Right now it's just different. I'm still looking for the good way.
signed = faultytext