Day 352: This thing called life..

(Disclaimer: Life is hard right now, so hopefully it doesn’t sound like I’m coming across as having no hope or optimism. This is just my view of things right now.)

This thing called life… I’ve never understood it. Never before, definitely not presently, and not in the future I don’t believe. I’ve walked around an emotional mess before, followed by periods where I felt guilt or condemnation in expressing such emotions and I acted the opposite- internalizing everything that went on and putting a smile on my face so I can be the stronger one. But it always came out, and it always will. I refuse to be a basket case but I become so anyway eventually by not expressing my thoughts or feelings at the moment and waiting to later sob in bed in the middle of the night or maybe go as far as to talk to someone about it.

And that’s what I did tonight. I called up a dear, close friend of mine who has always understood me. He’s brought out the very best in me, which no one has ever done before and it was stuff that I had grown up thinking was not acceptable. He’s the most real person I’ve ever met. When he’s going through a hard time he doesn’t internalize. He doesn’t go telling everyone about it, but he’ll open up to you if you just ask. What puzzles me is how his countenance and face are so readable when he is upset, and yet a handful, if that much, will go to him offering help. Everyone should be coming to him hand and foot asking if they can do anything for him, pray for him, be a listening ear for him. I think people need to get out of their stupid mindset of “Ohh, they don’t want to talk about it, he’ll be okay.” WHAT!? How do you know? Get out of your freakin bubble and open your eyes! Now, I do realize there are times that someone just needs to be alone and think on things, but if that the case the person should do one of two things: 1) Don’t be around a million people. If they are some of the few kind and tenderhearted people out there who will ask you what’s wrong, you don’t want to be a sour puss and get sick of them. Or, 2) Learn how to tell people, “I’d rather not talk about it right now, we’ll talk another time.” That way it leaves room for flexibility and the truth is being spoken. So, although this post wasn’t intended to be about this, it needed to be let out.

Tonight was a good time of venting to my dear friend, like I said, and WOW. After hanging up the phone I felt the weight of one hundred million pounds lift off my entire body. I cried almost the whole time, told him what frustrated me, what confused me, and how I didn’t want to be home.

I feel like I’ve been drowning. It’s like slowly walking into a river, knowing that it will most likely get deeper and deeper. I feel the cold go up my body causing my breathing to sharpen and quicken. Yet I keep going because I feel like that it’s my duty, that I have to be brave and strong, and be an example, and not make a mistake because it may cause a huge life turn or I may let someone down. When all along I can turn around and go back to the shore and find a better, more peaceful way to get across. What IS this thing called life? Why does it hurt so much when I think it’s supposed to be full of joy and love, and all I see is pain? Throughout these past few years as my eyes have seen life as the ugly it can be, the words of “The Scientist” by Coldplay have run through my mind. I view the first half of the song as an analogy of a conversation I’d have with God. He’d have the first paragraph and I’d reply with the second:

God:
Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry
You don't know how lovely you are
I had to find you, tell you I need you
Tell you I set you apart
Tell me your secrets, and ask me your questions
Oh let's go back to the start
Running in circles, coming up tails
Heads on a science apart

Me:
Nobody said it was easy
It's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Oh, take me back to the start.

I want to go back to what I said a second ago. That my eyes have seen the ugly that life can dish out. I grew up around a bunch of revolutionary guys who saw life as it was and yet created beauty within it. Everyone around them scoffed and laughed at them. Adults called them rebels and peers called them hippies. But I loved them. My heart connected with theirs and I’ve grown up seeing the world as it truly is because it started early. I thought that there would be no way for me to bring justice and change to the world if I didn’t see it as it was! But now I’ve seen it and it makes me sick. Hate is ugly, bitterness is a chill that goes to the bone. Divorce sucks. Betrayal is back-breaking. Sadness wrecks a body. And what can you do about it?

You can give up. Just throw your hands in the air and call it quits. Sulk in misery, bathe in bitterness, never get passed the hurt. Or you can push on through. Instead of sitting on the bank of complacency, you can jump on the boat of a journey to get across to the other side. You may hit some waves, there may be attacks, and there may be close calls, but you can sit behind and not move forward. There’s no point to life if you’re not moving forward. So we do the best we can to put trust in our Captain and say, “Alright, it’s your turn from here! I don’t know how to navigate across these waters, but I know you can and will do it safely.” Sad thing is, I think we try to yank the wheel out of His hands and navigate ourselves and all the while He’s saying, “Dude, you don’t know what you’re doing. Just trust Me.”

So I’ll end with that. We all have to figure out how the hand the wheel back over to God before we crash the boat haha. “Oh take me back to the start…”