Letting Go

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.

The White Spaces In Between

All the white spaces in between. That’s what bright sunlight reflecting off of the sea is like, blinding and painful, yet at the same time beautiful. You don’t want to look, because it can hurt, but at the same time it’s irresistible. You are drawn into its wonder and its beauty, that place of absolute peace that’s found in the gentle near-stillness. A calm day, with softly-rolling waves, the visible heartbeat of the earth.

But it can turn, become turbulent. Raw fury lashing out, fighting against the invisible restraints that hold it bound, caught in the cycle and order of things, wishing to be set free. You remain mesmerised, trying to ride along with it, hoping that it doesn’t break you. The thrill of the ride somehow outweighing any fear. Yet the fear is still there and part of you wants to run away from it, but you can’t. Once you step on board, there is no escape.

Then it is calm once more, the wonder and joy is returned to your face. Somehow the peaceful calm and stillness is even more beautiful for having survived the turbulence. You want to stay there, basking in its glory forever. Let each wave wash over you, each ray from the sun, fulfilling you, making you whole again.

All of that, that is what love is. It can be raw, hungry, turbulent. It can be calm, gentle, peaceful. It can be blinding, it can sting, it can hurt. But, above all, it is beautiful. It is wonderful and fulfilling if you can learn to ride with it. All the fun, thrills, excitement, but with those moments of absolute terror as it drags you from one rock to another. Yet that feeling of completeness, that white space in between, that overrides it all. That experience in the shared moments, the connection, the inner peace, that is what makes it all worthwhile.

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.

About to Derail

There is so much stress in my life right now. Too many things to get done, with time running out in which to do it in. Plus, getting older, feeling every day as my life moves forward. I’ll soon be thirty-four. It’s not a pleasant thought at all, knowing how few years I have left to settle down, a time frame of about six years in which I can have kids, if I so wish to. But that isn’t primarily what’s driving me right now. No, what’s driving me right now is despair, that feeling of being a complete failure, of bringing destruction to everything I touch. I’m an unwanted reject, too broken to be of any use to anyone. Who wants damaged goods nowadays? Too many have come into my life leaving behind piles upon piles of destruction. All anyone has wanted to do is to destroy me. Me, being the fool, has gone in, open-hearted, giving my all, as I always have done, loving with very little return, until it eventually destroys me.

After everything I’d seen and been through, I had decided that enough was enough, that I would give up. Me, unwanted, unneeded, not willing to ever give a single part of me to those undeserving ever again.

But then, something happens, something that took me completely by surprise. A light came on. Someone turned on a light inside me, a fragile thing that I hadn’t seen for such a long time. All those times I’d tried to relight a dwindling flame that was barely existent to begin with and here, all of a sudden, was a light that lit itself. Greedily, desperately, with fear, hunger and wonder in my eyes, I try to grab it with shaky hands, as if it is the most precious thing in the world and I just have to have it. Such a rare jewel that I was losing all hope of ever finding and here it suddenly was. Yet, I’m a clumsy fool. I burn myself on the flame, drop it on the ground, try to smother it with a heart that is so achingly reaching towards it, desperate to feed it. The caretaker comes to remove it to a safe place, puts a glass tube over it and a cordon around it. It is taken away from me. I can see it, but can’t touch. I can still just about feel the warmth, but from a distance, an all-too-safe distance. I’ve fucked up again.

So, here I am, again. Unable to cope with the possibility that there might be hope for me out there, but at the same time unable to cope with the other possibility of a lifetime alone. Yet, alone appears to be where it must be. I wasn’t ready to love again and perhaps I never will be. But, there again, are any of us ever ready? I don’t know if we actually have much choice, really, when the arrow chooses to strike. We all have a choice of how to react and I know that, because of my past, I can never react well to it. I am a frightened fawn, caught in the headlights. I want and need so desperately, but at the same time I am terrified of being torn to shreds again once more. I become a jittery fool that scares everyone away. So, thus, it leaves me doomed to the only choice left available – being alone.

Perhaps, in time, it won’t become a bad thing. Perhaps in time I will learn to trust myself, the only person I know I can truly rely on. I have been too nice to and too trusting of others in the past and it has been my downfall. So I say no more. I am done being that fool. It’s time to let the bitch start her reign.

Long, Lonely Thoughts

Sometimes, I just like to sit and think, to watch the world go by. It can be anywhere: at home, on a bus, on a bench just watching the many people walk by, rushing to and fro. I sit and think a lot, try to find that place where I can gather my thoughts and take stock of what’s going on in my life.

The reason for this is, sometimes my life seems like a rush. My mind, often working in overdrive, getting even worse if I’m nervous or excited. Well, I’ve spent several weeks in various mixed states of both, with the depressiveness lurking in the background, constantly trying to creep up on me and snatch me away back into the darkness. With all the drama and trauma of the past few months, at points I didn’t think I’d survive it, and with my life in a constant state of turmoil, it is, perhaps, quite surprising that I’ve made it this far at all.

So, a lot of my time, currently, is spent alone, just thinking:
Where am I going? What am I to do next? Am I doing the right thing? Will everything work out in the end?

This life seems so filled with unanswerable questions. Sometimes I really don’t have any faith at all that the next stage of my life will go any better, so I continue to ask them, to the empty air around me, sometimes shouting, screaming them out, ‘Don’t I deserve to live?!’ But nothing ever answers. The wind, the traffic, the subtle shuffling of life whispers in the silence. Yet, apart from that, there is just silence.

So, I look to the answers within myself, yet they’re always further questions:
Do I have the strength to try again? Do I even want to try? If I do try, could this be my last chance? But, considering it all, what other choice to I have but to try to make the best of what I have here, right now?

I sit and let the silence fill me, almost watching the world turn, go by, conserving my strength. If this is going to be my last fight, my last battle, then I will need all the energy available to me. I’m on my own now. I have a handful of great friends out there, but they can’t hold my hand where I’m going. So, I truly am on my own.

Somehow I need to find that strength to pull myself through, to bring myself to the next stage of the journey. I need hope, belief, however vague, that it will all be worthwhile in the end. For I know now that if I fail again, if I fail this time, then it will be the last.