There are so many things in life that you can’t fight for, like love, peace, happiness. At various points I’ve tried to fight for them all, with a greedy desperation, thinking that they all must come to me at some point if I just tried hard enough. But all I ended up doing was driving them away. In reality, in that fight, you eventually end up fighting against what it is you’re trying to gain, because in fighting it can do nothing but take a negative turn. It’s not just the friendly fire, but also the stress and pressure of the fight. Fighting can only ever do but one thing: destroy.
I’d realised this lesson before, but I kept repeating the mistake through my dark hours, when everything kept feeling like it was falling apart. I was so desperate for something to go right for once, for something to cling on to, but it all kept slipping through my fingers, pulling away from me. So many people running scared, so many pitfalls that I didn’t see in my distraction. It was only when I was on the verge of losing everything that I understood what I needed to do: let go.
It’s like that film, The NeverEnding Story. Everything is breaking, almost everything is gone, but just at that point when all has collapsed, the boy stands up and lets go of his own pain in order to save them all. That’s the point where I am at now, except the only person I need to save is myself. Unfortunately I can’t wish for a luck dragon, nor can I wish myself a better world, but I can wish to be a stronger and better person, thereby making it a reality by working towards it. I have a choice to move on from all the trauma and mistakes from my past, and I can only do that by letting it all go, accepting it, instead of fighting it.
Luckily not everything is gone. I have somewhere to live, I have a few good friends who haven’t yet run away screaming. I owe it to them as much as myself to finally become the person I am meant to be, rather than just the damaged product of my past. I think I am finally learning to live.
Showing posts with label loss. Show all posts
Showing posts with label loss. Show all posts
Thursday, 30 April 2015
Friday, 17 April 2015
The Darkness Within
I live with a darkness inside of me. I think most of us do, actually. But mine is quite alive. Sometimes it seeps out, fed by the brokenness, gobbling up every jagged morsel with an unquenchable hunger. Sometimes it just sits there, acknowledging me with a silent glare, reflecting my inner turmoil and pain back at me. Today has been a day when it has tried to do both.
I run on waves of energy bursts in order to get things done. I can intensely focus for short spurts, during which I am able to achieve much. But as soon as that light, that energy dies, it leaves me feeling empty once more. The emptiness is revealing, showing me all the things I’m missing, feeding into that ever-hungry darkness, eating me alive. I try to scream at the darkness, but it is unyielding. I try to reason with it, but it is unlistening and refuses to leave me alone. Eventually it wins the round and leaves me crying, shaking once more, open and bare, my pain again revealed.
There have been too many losses, too many changes again of late. I’ve tried desperately hard to hold onto beautiful things that have come my way. Yet they always slip through my grasp, as I always manage to chase them away with my greedy need. One thing that my life has taught me is that I can’t have good things. Good things are for good, straightforward, normal people, not for broken people like me. And as much as I am aware that there is not really such a thing as a “norm”, it often feels to me that I am so far away from the hypothetical “norm” line that I will always be driven into being an outsider everywhere.
So, here I am again, alone, no hope of being saved, no hope of being loved. The darkness is winning the fight again. I know that it is still up to me as to whether I let it win the war or not, but each individual battle takes its toll and there will come a day when I am so exhausted that I won’t want to fight anymore. Let’s just hope that it’s for the right reasons and not because the darkness takes me forever.
I run on waves of energy bursts in order to get things done. I can intensely focus for short spurts, during which I am able to achieve much. But as soon as that light, that energy dies, it leaves me feeling empty once more. The emptiness is revealing, showing me all the things I’m missing, feeding into that ever-hungry darkness, eating me alive. I try to scream at the darkness, but it is unyielding. I try to reason with it, but it is unlistening and refuses to leave me alone. Eventually it wins the round and leaves me crying, shaking once more, open and bare, my pain again revealed.
There have been too many losses, too many changes again of late. I’ve tried desperately hard to hold onto beautiful things that have come my way. Yet they always slip through my grasp, as I always manage to chase them away with my greedy need. One thing that my life has taught me is that I can’t have good things. Good things are for good, straightforward, normal people, not for broken people like me. And as much as I am aware that there is not really such a thing as a “norm”, it often feels to me that I am so far away from the hypothetical “norm” line that I will always be driven into being an outsider everywhere.
So, here I am again, alone, no hope of being saved, no hope of being loved. The darkness is winning the fight again. I know that it is still up to me as to whether I let it win the war or not, but each individual battle takes its toll and there will come a day when I am so exhausted that I won’t want to fight anymore. Let’s just hope that it’s for the right reasons and not because the darkness takes me forever.
Friday, 20 April 2012
Journeys
I've been loathe to update this for a while, partly because of all the things that have happened this year, which all seemed to culminate in the last few days. Because I went on a journey.
The thing about this journey, though, was even though it was predominantely a physical journey, it was also an emotional, self-searching and spiritual one. I had doubts along the way, at just about every single point I kept thinking I should turn back, that I couldn't or shouldn't go through with it. But I did, and despite my fears that of all the things that could have gone wrong, it turned into more than I could have hoped for and gave me some closure on some important aspects of my life.
This journey started on Tuesday evening, going to Brussels to sleep overnight before getting the Eurostar to London bright and early the next morning. I did something I'd never done before - I stayed in a hostel. Now I mostly did it for convenience, as it's so much cheaper than a hotel, sharing a room with people. Of course, I had doubts, safety, security, etc. (especially walking to this place, in the dark, in what looked like it could be a dodgy district!), but... I made it to the place safely, and I met some really fascinating people! There was a German lady who was living in Leuven, and a girl from the US, from Miami, who was travelling Europe to see friends, who kept apologising for everything (I'd fallen down the stairs Tues morning, missed the last step and had a few bruises. She apologised for that as well!). It was very weird getting up at 5:30am the next morning to go off to the station, the walk seeming very surreal. Then the train itself... Leaving behind the new life I'd made for myself to go and visit an old one...
Once were were out the otherside of the tunnel, I looked at the landscape around me, the rolling English hills with a motorway nestled amongst them, the typicalness and beauty that I had missed so much. It was... Strange. Seeing it now, as I was on this journey. Remembering everything I had left behind and everything I had left behind on leaving Belgium as well. The tears were trying to come as I was reaching London, me trying to hold them back. But I did, and managed to smile and sing good morning through customs and then to the lady at the ticket desk, who helped me enormously by giving me an itinery as well as the best tickets possible considering where I needed to be and by what time. And I kept that up all the way, despite the fact that I was so desperate to break, to allow myself to feel what was going on. I listened to all the conversations, familiarity in the language, delighting in the accents... And I just kept moving, trying not to think about what I was actually doing, through train to next train...
And, somehow, I got there. So many memories... The station at the other end, remembering the last time I was there alone, the person I was going to mourn being the one I had been going to meet... Such drama then! Remembering it fondly, knowing it was a part of them I could hold on to. But no one was there for me, then. Just a bus journey alone, to a town I hadn't seen in many years, then walking nervously to a church in the middle of the road (between seperate lanes of traffic) that I'd mostly previously seen as a rather large roundabout thing... I go inside, hoping that I'm at the right location, to see/hear I'd just got there on time, just as the vicar was still giving his welcome speach, and the church was full... So many people, most of whom I didn't know, all there to celebrate the life of one person. And the memories, memories shared, shared memories of tales retold, some of which I'd forgotten, and those new tales I hadn't heard before... It made me not only understand them better, but also others that I'd known close to them, like... The reflections, ripples in the pool... And I saw myself, suddenly, in a new light, who I am, who I was, how I'd seen them... I allowed myself not just to see the sadness of the loss, but also the joy and happiness that had been given to so many people, including myself. As well, at the reception afterwards... Talking to people I'd long left behind, the space between us enabling me to see them in a new light. It was something I'd needed for a long time, and allowed me to gain some peace and put to rest some old and once-painful memories. Including starting to put to rest the more recent ones...
A couple of hours of finally sharing everything I'd been feeling, then fond farewells, how it should have been all those years ago, but suddenly now, at this time of sadness... I knew as I left, back to the train station, that I was essentially closing a chapter in my life that I'd inadvertently left open, perhaps hoping I could go back as if nothing had happened and just continue from where I left off, as if the bad things hadn't been there... How much I'd missed people... But... I'd changed, they'd changed. With new lives, new loves, so many things had changed and I saw it all. But, there was a glimmer of the old that made me smile and left me with as much warmth as sadness, with as much hope as sorrow, but with as many questions as answers. Yet it wasn't just an ending - I knew it was also a new beginning. I would be seeing some of them again, just not as it was before.
The train journey back to London, thinking about everything, finally allowing my tiredness in. I don't know how I managed it, thought I had to just give up and stop... But I got back, got some food, and rather drunkenly walked to a hostel, going straight up to the room and staying there once I was booked in. I was just going to go to sleep after eating, but I stayed up, read a bit, then chatted to some other people there. A French girl that spoke English so well that I thought she was American! An English girl with a German boyfriend who'd been reluctant to learn the language as she didn't have much time, but my story inspired her to try. A Thai girl who'd spent a year in the UK learning English and was very understandable.
I got up early again, with a train back to Brussels at 06:50 - the first one. I hadn't slept much, was so tired, but I still smiled and sung good morning as I went through customs, and chatted to one of the people there who I'd seen the morning before. Just brightening someone's day and thereby brightening mine, a little.
The journey back... Leaving the world I'd once known for one I know now... It was weird as I got into Brussels, watching the buildings... A world that was still foreign to me yet so familiar at the same time, me thinking how ugly the buildings are... I realised at that point that I didn't belong in my old world any more, but neither did I belong to this new world that had started to become familiar to me. I was in between, someone of all worlds...
Then, after leaving the Eurostar and once on the train home, having an argument with a train conductor in Dutch about the details of my ticket (apparently Eurostar tickets don't automatically include "any Belgian station" anymore unless it states that), I knew I was back in the new world, the different sights, the different sounds... And then, off the train, onto a bus, a short walk and I was home...
Home. I dropped everything, and finally let out all the tears that had been waiting. I don't know how I'd held it that long, as the occasional tear had broken through. I had thought so much all the way back and now...
Through all of this, through all I've seen, through all the people. I inspired people, I comforted people, I brightened the day of people... I realised that I'd gained something through giving so much, as well. As well as realising something very important, something that I'd forgotten and at once mentioned to someone else who was grieving pretty much as soon as I got in:
This year has been one of mourning, not just for lost life, but also those that are no longer a part of my life through other means. I wrote the post on 2 January, Today I Cried, and I didn't realise then how significant it would become. But despite the loss, the emptiness that it can cause, I also still have them with me and think about them often. Because they were and are still a part of my life, not just in photos and objects, but deep inside. And they will remain with me, always. They are no longer physically around me, but I can still be inspired by them, the deep imprints they have left on my soul. And it is their memories, all those fond moments, as much as the new friends and new memories, that will keep me moving forward.
The thing about this journey, though, was even though it was predominantely a physical journey, it was also an emotional, self-searching and spiritual one. I had doubts along the way, at just about every single point I kept thinking I should turn back, that I couldn't or shouldn't go through with it. But I did, and despite my fears that of all the things that could have gone wrong, it turned into more than I could have hoped for and gave me some closure on some important aspects of my life.
This journey started on Tuesday evening, going to Brussels to sleep overnight before getting the Eurostar to London bright and early the next morning. I did something I'd never done before - I stayed in a hostel. Now I mostly did it for convenience, as it's so much cheaper than a hotel, sharing a room with people. Of course, I had doubts, safety, security, etc. (especially walking to this place, in the dark, in what looked like it could be a dodgy district!), but... I made it to the place safely, and I met some really fascinating people! There was a German lady who was living in Leuven, and a girl from the US, from Miami, who was travelling Europe to see friends, who kept apologising for everything (I'd fallen down the stairs Tues morning, missed the last step and had a few bruises. She apologised for that as well!). It was very weird getting up at 5:30am the next morning to go off to the station, the walk seeming very surreal. Then the train itself... Leaving behind the new life I'd made for myself to go and visit an old one...
Once were were out the otherside of the tunnel, I looked at the landscape around me, the rolling English hills with a motorway nestled amongst them, the typicalness and beauty that I had missed so much. It was... Strange. Seeing it now, as I was on this journey. Remembering everything I had left behind and everything I had left behind on leaving Belgium as well. The tears were trying to come as I was reaching London, me trying to hold them back. But I did, and managed to smile and sing good morning through customs and then to the lady at the ticket desk, who helped me enormously by giving me an itinery as well as the best tickets possible considering where I needed to be and by what time. And I kept that up all the way, despite the fact that I was so desperate to break, to allow myself to feel what was going on. I listened to all the conversations, familiarity in the language, delighting in the accents... And I just kept moving, trying not to think about what I was actually doing, through train to next train...
And, somehow, I got there. So many memories... The station at the other end, remembering the last time I was there alone, the person I was going to mourn being the one I had been going to meet... Such drama then! Remembering it fondly, knowing it was a part of them I could hold on to. But no one was there for me, then. Just a bus journey alone, to a town I hadn't seen in many years, then walking nervously to a church in the middle of the road (between seperate lanes of traffic) that I'd mostly previously seen as a rather large roundabout thing... I go inside, hoping that I'm at the right location, to see/hear I'd just got there on time, just as the vicar was still giving his welcome speach, and the church was full... So many people, most of whom I didn't know, all there to celebrate the life of one person. And the memories, memories shared, shared memories of tales retold, some of which I'd forgotten, and those new tales I hadn't heard before... It made me not only understand them better, but also others that I'd known close to them, like... The reflections, ripples in the pool... And I saw myself, suddenly, in a new light, who I am, who I was, how I'd seen them... I allowed myself not just to see the sadness of the loss, but also the joy and happiness that had been given to so many people, including myself. As well, at the reception afterwards... Talking to people I'd long left behind, the space between us enabling me to see them in a new light. It was something I'd needed for a long time, and allowed me to gain some peace and put to rest some old and once-painful memories. Including starting to put to rest the more recent ones...
A couple of hours of finally sharing everything I'd been feeling, then fond farewells, how it should have been all those years ago, but suddenly now, at this time of sadness... I knew as I left, back to the train station, that I was essentially closing a chapter in my life that I'd inadvertently left open, perhaps hoping I could go back as if nothing had happened and just continue from where I left off, as if the bad things hadn't been there... How much I'd missed people... But... I'd changed, they'd changed. With new lives, new loves, so many things had changed and I saw it all. But, there was a glimmer of the old that made me smile and left me with as much warmth as sadness, with as much hope as sorrow, but with as many questions as answers. Yet it wasn't just an ending - I knew it was also a new beginning. I would be seeing some of them again, just not as it was before.
The train journey back to London, thinking about everything, finally allowing my tiredness in. I don't know how I managed it, thought I had to just give up and stop... But I got back, got some food, and rather drunkenly walked to a hostel, going straight up to the room and staying there once I was booked in. I was just going to go to sleep after eating, but I stayed up, read a bit, then chatted to some other people there. A French girl that spoke English so well that I thought she was American! An English girl with a German boyfriend who'd been reluctant to learn the language as she didn't have much time, but my story inspired her to try. A Thai girl who'd spent a year in the UK learning English and was very understandable.
I got up early again, with a train back to Brussels at 06:50 - the first one. I hadn't slept much, was so tired, but I still smiled and sung good morning as I went through customs, and chatted to one of the people there who I'd seen the morning before. Just brightening someone's day and thereby brightening mine, a little.
The journey back... Leaving the world I'd once known for one I know now... It was weird as I got into Brussels, watching the buildings... A world that was still foreign to me yet so familiar at the same time, me thinking how ugly the buildings are... I realised at that point that I didn't belong in my old world any more, but neither did I belong to this new world that had started to become familiar to me. I was in between, someone of all worlds...
Then, after leaving the Eurostar and once on the train home, having an argument with a train conductor in Dutch about the details of my ticket (apparently Eurostar tickets don't automatically include "any Belgian station" anymore unless it states that), I knew I was back in the new world, the different sights, the different sounds... And then, off the train, onto a bus, a short walk and I was home...
Home. I dropped everything, and finally let out all the tears that had been waiting. I don't know how I'd held it that long, as the occasional tear had broken through. I had thought so much all the way back and now...
Through all of this, through all I've seen, through all the people. I inspired people, I comforted people, I brightened the day of people... I realised that I'd gained something through giving so much, as well. As well as realising something very important, something that I'd forgotten and at once mentioned to someone else who was grieving pretty much as soon as I got in:
You can't mourn the dead by dying yourself, but only by living and being alive.Despite how tired I was I knew I had to keep up, keep on, keep on moving. And even now, a day later, a day after returning, I know it's likely that I'll come down again, have to deal with all the emotions all over again, but... I try to take the positives out of it all, the inspiration. I could be so much! I know. Life is changing, moving forward, and I have to keep up. I don't want to be lost again. I went to my classes yesterday, despite how exhausted I was. Have taken it a bit easier today, but have still gotten on with things, cooked something, made myself feel better. Because I know that if I stop...
This year has been one of mourning, not just for lost life, but also those that are no longer a part of my life through other means. I wrote the post on 2 January, Today I Cried, and I didn't realise then how significant it would become. But despite the loss, the emptiness that it can cause, I also still have them with me and think about them often. Because they were and are still a part of my life, not just in photos and objects, but deep inside. And they will remain with me, always. They are no longer physically around me, but I can still be inspired by them, the deep imprints they have left on my soul. And it is their memories, all those fond moments, as much as the new friends and new memories, that will keep me moving forward.
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