|
And before we talk of any repentance... |
|
|
|
|
|
|
My horoscope for this week said that "this is a period for making major changes to your routine" and I am feeling very, very good about the idea of that. For a long, long, long while now I have felt very...out of touch with my own life. I really have no other way to describe it then that. I feel with each passing day that things are more unreal and are only getting more surreal as time passes- sometimes out of nowhere I will hear a song that used to have such meaning to me* and it will just give me a mental blue screen for the rest of the day.
At some point or the other things just...got wildly out of hand; my life was a lovely balloon that I held onto with a tight little fist until one day the wind hit it just right...and my hold was perhaps relaxed at that moment because I was content with things or maybe it was the wind being so much more bigger and stronger then I am...but my hold on that string was just not enough. I had to stand there and squint as I watched that balloon travel up and up and farther away from me while I was still in the exact same place. In a blink everything had changed; while I was still rooted in the exact same spot- while all I could do was watch it get further and further away from me, every now and again daring to reach up and try to wrap my hand around it as if that was all it would take. As if the same hand that was silly enough to let go of it could be the exact same hand to get control of it again.
That was what I thought for a very long time. As one's thinking often will (or perhaps just the way mine will), I swung back and forth from extreme to extreme, one moment cursing the wind, as if the wind was to blame. It has no thoughts of vengeance, no personal vendettas; it simply is and there's a lovely simplicity to such an existence that if we could all just be that way we might all know a little bit more peace of mind. Then, just as quick to condemn the wind for what I had allowed to happen I would be cursing my grip on things- as if my hold was so great that something as powerful and everywhere as the wind would have been no match for little me. What power I must have, I would automatically fume at myself when I had such thoughts, that the very nature of wind should have been humbled before my presence. In one second I would be hating the wind for having proven how ineffective I am in the face of things and in the next I would be digging at myself for daring to be so damned ineffective in the first place, even though every one of us are just holding onto our balloons for all we are worth, hoping against hope to be able to stay strong and just hold on.
Two things I pride myself on being able to do, no matter what. No matter how hard the wind blows- stay strong. No matter how hard it rages at my little balloon- hold on.
Then...to be left standing there, hand still trying to reach for something long gone...
I am not sure when it happened, really. I guess I just woke up one day and realized I could continue to alternately beat myself over the head and heart for what really was out of my control to begin with- I mean, really, even as arrogant as I can be I have always known that in the end, life is life. It continues all around us even if we feel like that our personal little claim on it has come to a halt. That's both the beauty and horror of life; it goes on even when we believe we can not. I could continue to beat myself up over something that I never had any real control over anyway...or...or...or I could accept things as they were and try to come to some kind of peace over matters. It was not an easy battle, in truthful full disclosure, but such things very rarely are. Especially and probably because the very demons that one has to face down are made of the same stock the one fighting them are made out of- I am stubborn, so are they. I love a good fight, so do they. I do not give up easily, neither do they. I am set in my ways, I believe in my heart of hearts I am doing the right things, despite what golden roads they pave...on and on. What strength I believe I have they believe they have as well and heaven help the power that tries to break through my walls when I am fully shielded. It was not easy and I know a good many of the demons I have faced off are merely sleeping their time away but finally, finally there are days like this.
When I wake up and realize something that I had been blind to before- something that maybe I did not even want to see- perhaps could not, because all the time I was looking up I was being blinded by the sun, blinded by my own unwillingness to face such a heavy, revolutionary, earth-shattering truth:
I have another balloon. When did it get there? Don't really know, but I think that what happened was that while I was wasting all my efforts in trying to keep an eye on that balloon that got away from me- and cursing the mean, old gust of wind that took it- I just automatically had another one. It might be a different color. Might be a different shape...it's undeniably different but since when was different a bad thing? It's a balloon, damnit, and it means one of two things; at the end of the day this was what I walked away with, a golden truth that shines harder for me then the sun in the sky:
You can spend your time mourning what you no longer have- an act that will never bring back what is gone- or you can spend your time holding tight to what you do have, appreciating it and being thankful it is there. The past is the past. What's gone is gone, what's done is done, to put it into the words of an artist I respect with all my being. All the time you are putting into wishing things had went different, that you had not lost what you tried so hard to keep...all of that is wasting precious time- the same time that you will look back on later and wish you had been doing something else with. It's a nasty, nasty cycle, spending all your time missing something that you used to have- wasting the precious time you have left worrying about something you have lost...when any moment you will lose something yet again dear to you...and what do you have for it? Wasted time. The act perpetuates itself. If only happiness would do the same thing, humanity would be so much more better off...but it does not, alas. Then again, a thing worth having is a thing worth working for.
Maybe it is the time of year. I am watching so many things change and shift; summer brightness into autumn calm, a shift of the sky so that the sun is in a different part of her castle, a change in the air so that you know so many things are coming to an end...but missing the summer will not turn the clock back, it will only ensure you will let all the joys of autumn slip through your fingers and be just as missed. I can take as many walks at night as I possibly can and those paths will never lead me back to what I once walked away from and into at the same moment. There's just forward, in the end. No going back, though we are all blessed and cursed with the ability to spend our entire time on our paths looking back if we so choose; while there can be joy in doing that there can be, if we allow ourselves, joy in looking ahead, too.
I think I have finally come to a place that I can not only admit that to myself but I can accept it as well. That's progress, too, I like to think.
In the end all any of us can do is just hold tight to our balloons. And stop worrying about the wind or our grips on the strings- in the end what is going to be will be and there's peace of mind in that.
I want to appreciate the balloon I have now as much as possible before the next hard wind comes, as I am sure it will; I am just as sure, however, that whatever else happens, in the end I will have done all I could do.
There's that much.
And there's something else, too- a small truth that I seemed to have misplaced during all that staring at the sky.
There's a joy to be had in just being allowed to hold a string...and sometimes as you watch your balloon floating away you are being given another balloon just as good in some ways, even better in others.
Time will always tell.
* KoRn's "Alone I Break". Wow. Talk about a mind-*bleep*!
Entry was edited and posted in the form you now see at 8:24 PM, September 28, 2009.
 RadiantFlare · Mon Sep 28, 2009 @ 09:17pm · 0 Comments |
|
|
|
|
|
