(no subject)
Well, yeah, I'm still alive, although sometimes I wonder. Why is it that the less I write down, the less substantial I feel? As if words hold me together in some way that my atoms and molecules and muscles and tissue cannot, as if whatever I wrote down in a diary ten years ago says more about me than my sharpest memories. It seems this way sometimes. Maybe because I used to write about every important (I use this term loosely) thing that happened to me. I don't do that anymore. It's harder since I've lost my grip on terms like "love" and "self" and even "feeling." Philosophy is the best and worst thing that's ever happened to me. I used to look at life like a warm, tiny, glowing thing that I could grasp between the fingers of my own two hands. And now more and more I find the world opening up into this infinite vastness with more frozen emptiness than I can fit into my little mind, and I'm so lost I'm not even sure I can find the hands that belong to me, let alone the waiting arms of another.
When I was thirteen I walked out of a church and promised never to go back, and I told myself that whatever faith was, I didn't want it and I certainly didn't need it. I was wrong. I didn't even know it until I'd lost it. Until I learned about lies and betrayal and the way that the inclinations of one life can undermine the survival of another. I learned that we can ruin each other and often do. And I learned that we can save each other but barely try. I learned that counting on myself just isn't enough, and counting on others can be excruciatingly impossible. Being strong and good isn't so great if there's no one around to care about how strong and good you are.
I've done a lot of grown-up things in the past year. I got a good job. I became an intern. I took tons of classes and learned tons of stuff. I spent my first summer away from my hometown, making money, buying groceries, staying up late opening my life to a boy I might have loved. And even since then that word doesn't mean what it used to: he threw my secrets back in my face and erased six months of memories and left me, and months later I can't recall his name without wishing I'd never heard of love. Not because I loved him, but because I might have. I might finally have learned. I might finally have believed. But everything feels different at 4AM under the summer stars, when the universe seems to be made up of more light than darkness.
And so on long weekends, when the motion stops, I think about these things and how silly it all seems. Has this nagging skepticism really made me any better? Is this uncertainty really what I want for myself? And then I remember that it doesn't matter at all, what I want. I didn't choose this temporal life. I didn't choose to be this green-eyed creature who shrieks at death and curses the stars for their smallness. I didn't ask to be human, stranded in this body, stranded on this earth, and yet here I am. And you know what? This place is really beautiful. Snow drifting across streetlights. Wind playing against my skin. My favorite symphonies. My brother's wedding ring. Theresa's laugh. Jordan's hands. My mother and my father, and their sacrifices, and their joy.
Darkness, yes, filled with the deafening sound of innumerable heartbeats, echoing off of every infinite corner.
When I was thirteen I walked out of a church and promised never to go back, and I told myself that whatever faith was, I didn't want it and I certainly didn't need it. I was wrong. I didn't even know it until I'd lost it. Until I learned about lies and betrayal and the way that the inclinations of one life can undermine the survival of another. I learned that we can ruin each other and often do. And I learned that we can save each other but barely try. I learned that counting on myself just isn't enough, and counting on others can be excruciatingly impossible. Being strong and good isn't so great if there's no one around to care about how strong and good you are.
I've done a lot of grown-up things in the past year. I got a good job. I became an intern. I took tons of classes and learned tons of stuff. I spent my first summer away from my hometown, making money, buying groceries, staying up late opening my life to a boy I might have loved. And even since then that word doesn't mean what it used to: he threw my secrets back in my face and erased six months of memories and left me, and months later I can't recall his name without wishing I'd never heard of love. Not because I loved him, but because I might have. I might finally have learned. I might finally have believed. But everything feels different at 4AM under the summer stars, when the universe seems to be made up of more light than darkness.
And so on long weekends, when the motion stops, I think about these things and how silly it all seems. Has this nagging skepticism really made me any better? Is this uncertainty really what I want for myself? And then I remember that it doesn't matter at all, what I want. I didn't choose this temporal life. I didn't choose to be this green-eyed creature who shrieks at death and curses the stars for their smallness. I didn't ask to be human, stranded in this body, stranded on this earth, and yet here I am. And you know what? This place is really beautiful. Snow drifting across streetlights. Wind playing against my skin. My favorite symphonies. My brother's wedding ring. Theresa's laugh. Jordan's hands. My mother and my father, and their sacrifices, and their joy.
Darkness, yes, filled with the deafening sound of innumerable heartbeats, echoing off of every infinite corner.