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Nights of Broken Lights and Darkened Paths

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I used to want to be a hero when I was younger. Someone who shines a light on those around me, allowing people to see the world and all its wonder as I have. To be able to find hope in the most dire of situations, to find the silver lining in the cloud of grey, to finally understand their worth and the worth they bring to others. Though there is nothing wrong with these lofty goals, wanting to make the world a better place, but I realized that heroes can only exist where there is danger and distress. Where the time and seasons fall hard, and waves wash over our heads, a hero is needed to be there to right the wrong and save the day. It’s the light that needs the dark to exist. The greatest gift to a hero would truly be a world where they are not necessary. It concerns me sometimes that the archetype of the hero presupposes their rarity. That their actions would not be commonplace. That other would not act when the need arises. We need those to carry that role for others as the world will not take care of them on their own. Though this is a bit of a ramble, what I’m trying to get at is that is that there is not enough action and care to go around, that certain people need to shoulder that burden uniquely. That the world is a dark place for many others and people crave the path forward. It’s a lost place, with people feeling like their are surrounded by thick fog, feeling their way through and hoping that each step they take they are not getting close to the edge of a cliff.

It’s been my experience, as of late, that there are so many people who’ve just lost their way. People who have been out into the world with the expectation of competency but no explanation of how they are supposed to proceed. That they see the world and their situation as dangerous, disenchanting, and disastrous. That the bell rings in the morning and dispair for the continuance of life of the sets in.

I understand this completely because I’ve been there. The world, at times, is a harsh and unforgiving place, which leaves no room to know where to go. It feels like we fall behind because this mismatched expectation gives us no understanding of direction or feeling as if there is no time to grow to meet the challenge. We are stuck in a cycle, hoping for someone to reach out and tell us that we will be okay or extend a hand in help. It’s so hard to push forward as we feel alone in the universe, just trying not to get too close to the edge.

I’ve recently, for better or worse, taken on the whole of mentor and teacher to some very unexpected people. People who ordinarily would be perfectly capable on their own, but their lives seem to have burdened them with unnecessary troubles. But as time has passed, I’ve become more acutely aware of all those around me who feel the same. These people want that light, that guide, to clear away the fog and give them some semblance of direction. It’s just within these systems that we live that give no real guidance in the path to take, so we cling to the familiar in the hopes that the path we have taken will eventually lead us to where we want to go.

It feels like a breakdown in the community in which these problems can be voiced and care can be provided. I feel sorry at times for those who I help because I know I’m not enough. I can try to be the light in the darkness, but sometimes I feel like I am but a mere candle flame among the sea. That I, though, can help illuminate the way, but may not be able to show them their direction or help them heal from their wrongs. I’m scared that the advice I give will hurt them, that I will lead them astray. that they will regret their time and for listening to a fool like me. I just hope that I can be a warm presence to them. That I can give them strength to stand on their own. That one day they won’t need me anymore because the love and care they need will be right there for them.

I don’t know if I’m enough on this broken street of mine, with flickering lights and overgrown paths. I will keep you safe, but your journey is your own. I just hope I can help you be more of yourself and remember your strength because I think there should be more of you in the world, too.

Somewhere I belong

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Linkin Park’s music filled the headphones during my youth. Being played on repeat to a crowd of one, their music was like a perfect whirlwind touching down into my life when the world felt chaotic, and a storm was exactly what I needed. The music themes of hurt, pain, and loneliness resonated with the depth of my desperate struggle to feel wanted in all the years I felt alone.

As I grew older, I found spaces that I felt were supportive and people who were willing to support me. The need to listen to Linkin Park went away, and that feeling of finding something new to sustain me grew. Years past as I made progress towards feeling whole, maybe by pushing aside these much more difficult feelings. I sometimes wondered if I was actually healing or just pushing away these sorrows and hurts to a more manageable place. What I didn’t expect with all my progress is that graduate school would uproot my comfort, uproot my hurt, and make me come face to face with my trauma when I still felt unready and unwilling. Though we do not get to choose the moments of our lives that need to deal with our problems, there were certainly better and worse moments. Even through the miracle that has been brought about by the most recent freedoms, I still feel drawn back into that darkness, drowned in difficulty, feeling alone and out of place.

Sometimes, my life feels like I’m still that kid, listening to that cathartic rock/hip-hop music, wondering when my time will come. When the doors open, when I feel welcomed into a place I was meant to be. When my talents, time, and presence are all seen as an asset rather than just existing in that space. I feel warmed by conversations and don’t feel paranoid about whether or not my comments are received positively. Maybe that is too much to ask from the world, but it’s so fundamental that it feels wrong to believe it should not exist.

This is my great fear for the next stage of my life. That I continue to feel this unease as I move into these spaces where I don’t belong and miss the opportunity to find a better place for me. That the uneasiness is not a feature of needing to learn or adapt but a much more fundamental impediment of my character. That I have gone all this way just to be unfit for the spaces I have striven for. After all these years, I’m still that kid wondering when my time will come, and I will find these places and people I am meant to be with. When I finally self-actualize and feel like I could contribute meaningfully. Places where I’m not constantly second-guessing myself because of this fear of ineptitude. Is this just how academics are meant to feel? If so, why would I want to put myself through this. If this is a sign I don’t belong, then why am I so afraid of doing something new.

Though I have moved to a better place and found friends I can rely on, I sometimes feel still like that lonely boy listening to Linkin Park, but maybe that will continue to be my motivation to find someplace better. Someplace I belong.

The Art of Change and Growth

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In times of great change, when the ground shakes and the skys buckle, do we say that all this is how it is intended to be? Do we believe the earth,3 after such torment, was always this way? We just needed time to discover some humble facet that, through time has gone overlooked. When mountains rise out of the sea and when great valleys are carved, do we believe that nature is just returning to itself? I say this as it makes me ponder the essence of change for ourselves: can we truly change, or is this journey of continual self-discovery?

I’ve just returned from a trip, one of those trips that I always promised myself I would go on, and I am endlessly happy that I did. I walked across farway lands, across fields, mountains, and forests; all for the purpose of finding something I had lost long ago.

I can recount this tale in its entirety, telling you about each step I walked and the road I crossed, but those are simply the mechanics of a much more magnificent journey. A journey of the spirit and the soul let to wander and heal.

You see upon this path for me laid a great many things, but most important of them was time. Time to process and debate all these little things that I had experienced through the past four years when I had felt like I had lost myself. Time made synonymousw with distance as each moment was a movement, and so as I was moving through the world so was I moving through these heavy thoughts and emotions.

I started with rediscovering love, allowing it to pour from my fingertips onto the land. To pervade my thoughts, words, and action. To imbue itself in a sense of care that I feel an outpouring of myself. Through love I felt full as I continued to give it away.

Then I thought about the idea of quality and meaning, these things that can not be readily measured by scale or stick. These pieces of ourselves become disregarded as those around us have difficulty writing down or calculating their metric. The idea of being good, is so amorphous and yet so vital to being human that we write books and tales about how to achieve it.

I experience the anger that I hid away, behind rocks and stones. It came out on the heated road, alone on the way as this even hotter frustration pushed it’s way to the surface. To be heard, to be seen, to be experienced, as it was meant to be.

I experience that healing, this breath of the world. A peace only achievable, I’m convinced, when you allow everything to flow through you. To allow the pettiness and grief to run its course so that way you can inhale the world and all of its wonder. It allowed me to let go and in doing so find myself.

In the finality of this journey, I was filled with all I could describe as life, vital, chi, and anima. This spirit of things made me thankful for existence, thankful for the time and all I have left of it. It made me thankful for my moments and wishful for the future. It gave me back to myself and this feeling of being whole.

So I ask this question: Did this trip change me or did I just become more of myself? Did these moments impact me or was this all just there in the first place. Did a mountain form or a valley manifest. Did the sea come knocking to shape my body just as the world? Changed irrevocably, though made better by its presence. For that, I don’t know, but I am nevertheless grateful.

Overwhelmed by a Sense of Honor and Integrity

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Welcome Rain – Jiandeng Xing

I’ve spent most of my life attempting to escape, avoid, and overcome the complications that come from interpersonal relationships. You would too if you had the life I did growing up, where the instability of family, friends, and overall relationships would ensure that I was always alert and anticipating danger at every turn. To cope with this, I didn’t not get involved with others, even when their lives were difficult or they wanted me to come along as I felt that their life circumstances would somehow find it’s way back to me and punishment would be soon to come. Distance was king and I was born to be a ruler.

As I grew, experiences made me wiser. I had a revelation that distance can keep you safe but can’t keep you warm at night. The space between us all makes us feel cold and ultimately alone as the chill of distance whips away the only warmth we have left. A life trying to cultivate a small internal flame to reduce the occurrence of trouble with the flame of other people began to make me feel like a king of fools in a tower of ice of my own creation. I sought to amend this chill and became more involved with people’s lives, those of my friends, family, and acquaintances. I never lost the wariness of that time but it at least felt like I was moving forwards and allowing my heart and soul to thaw in the congregation of other people.

It’s been many years since this revelation and I have built a foundation where I find those who I have chosen to let in to enter my heart and warm its chamber to support me. Though I may not be the ruler of this domain, I am at least among those who are will me to walk with me on this journey. These connections I know to be indispensable.

To diverge for a moment, for the totality of this story to make sense, I need to address another trait that runs orthogonally to what I believe in this instance of distance, warmth, and ice. I grew up believing in heroes, not necessarily for the ultimate and sometimes outlandish way they would go about the world but this idea that the struggle against wrong and evil, though at times arduous, was worthwhile. That good in the world was a manifestation of intention and work, and a good life requires eternal vigilance. Through strife, we may be able to create something greater. Not all work may feel progressive but all steps at least move us in a direction of change.

This meant then when I saw something wrong occurring I would try to go out of my way to make it right. To find that justice. Though going through life rather passively at first, I have gained the courage to fight for good even at the expense of my comfort and myself. I have found solace in my integrity and found purpose in serving it. It was some something I learned and looked up to. This desire to live a life serving the light despite the challenges.

When these two things meet what I find is difficult decisions. When the beneficial nature of a foundation of warmth collides with stiff belief and integrity, it leads to a loss of self or of foundation. A need for the balance to become upset purposefully, to be an agent of entropy, to destroy a piece of my heart or a piece of my soul. It requires a sacrifice, to bring about harm to myself either way. To care means to open yourself up to trouble, and I found myself within it.

Then the question, which do I sacrifice. My heart or my soul. It’s been a conundrum that I’ve been contending in the long hours of my nights. Do I allow the entropy to escape, to wound my heart, to make things right but potentially shatter someone’s foundation in the process? Or, do I allow myself to allow this great injustice to eat me from the inside out, never allowing myself to live in peace? Though one of the options feels clearly more selfish as it may save me from a lifetime of suffering, it will do harm to others through harm to bring out a potential good. It makes it all the worse to parse whether the intention to choose it is to save others or myself. I am overwhelmed by the burden of this decision though I do know what I must do for the sake of others so I ask for the courage to push forward.

I avoided people to ensure I wouldn’t be stuck in situations like these as plays are fun to watch not to perform. Perhaps this comedy or tragedy of my life requires this act to set another journey in motion.

The danger of opening up is the vulnerability to hurt and be hurt. Though I do not know if the path I walk is correct, I will walk it with my head held high as that the best I can do. To walk with integrity so I continue forward. Though it pains me to do this, I don’t regret walking forward because I at least know who I will be once this is all over.

Cold War Kids

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Water’s Edge – まぬが

People say that the cold war ended in 1991, but for me, it started in 1992.
The day I was born, the battlefield began, not with fighting and disruption but rather through a dissolution of what other kids find as a firm foundation to live life upon.

I do not remember this union, though I am told that it existed through pictures and memories of all those who had the opportunity to experience it’s ephemeral existence. No, for my sister and I, what we knew was shouting over the phone and proxy wars between two people who had said until death to us part but would like nothing more than to be apart at death.

I can almost perfectly recollect the wars that were fought using children as a weapon, swinging us back and forth, with each strike damaging and dulling our delicate mental health. To this day, I look around and wonder what little eccentricities may have bloomed from the battlefield of my mind. How many unexpected scars and traumas are waiting to be awakened in the myriad of moments I have yet to experience. With no way to determine or avoid distress used to brace myself constantly for the cataclysmic collision of conflicts that would crawl it’s way into my cranium.

I had been reflecting on this recently, about the way I never truly understood a sense of normalcy because my normal was made so askew that I believed mountains were valleys and valleys were mountains. Though I have since learned this lesson, I am left with this sense the “normal” life will never be within my grasp. Like a fish living in water, I will never fully understand the nature of the bird that was given a chance to fly.

I remember the days in and days out when I lost who I was, I lost choice, I lost breath, and most of all I lost all that was left. I became the puppet who you could pull the string and carry out a messy pantomime of what I believe to be a functioning human being. I remember the voice of those friends who told me that I would no longer be able to play with them because it was too hard to keep track of my schedule. I recollect all the opportunities that faded away because arranging a meeting became too much of a hassle. I still have engraved the moments I missed because I was not allowed to exist in a way that made sense. I lost so much I became obsessed with perserving all I could keep, but like sand on the beach, all that I could hold would ultimately wash away when the water comes in.

I wasn’t until after I returned home from college that I sought to find some solace and peace in the chaotic sprawl that had become my life. Even now, there are wounds all around from the damage done by everyone involved. Patterns of behaving that have no hope of a resolution. I find, though, that recognition of humanity in those superpowers that lead the fight as a way to cope with the travesties I experience growing up.

Though I recognize our faulty lives and acknowledge the inadequacies that pervade those who had a hand in shaping this situation, I can tell you that I still feel the sting of disappointment, even when the expectation is failure. Perhaps this is the last semblance of childish hope that stokes the light of a small candle within me.

I found acceptance in my unordinary life, though sometimes I wish things were easier. I may never know what it will be like to not have family drama or conflict, though I can be one to champion peace and understanding.

I can’t say every moment I lived was terrible, and I have nothing to look back to fondly, but like a flashing bulb, my dark memories still light up the ceiling as I lay in bed at night. I know that though the war may be over, its effects are long-lasting, even when I am thousands of miles away.

A Last Song For Duo

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I’m going to try and put into words, this experience made too ephemeral, this moment crafted premature, this time intended for never and not yet but arrived just the same. Oh Duo, for how I miss you. How dearly I cannot say for language falls short in constructions of eternity and the infinite. These memories and moments with you seer beneath my skin, for forgetting, is a sin and I intend to be a saint. Though I’m sure this prose is more for me than for you, these words stand as a small testament to you and our time together. Though I can’t hold you any longer, I hope that this passage will preserve a piece of you everlasting.

What can I truly say other than I miss your large bright green eyes. Oh, now they used to look at me like I was home. A place I feel for me I hardly know but for you was within me. This peace I had because I was able to provide for you something that I had long forgotten myself. This yearning, I feel and wish I would see them truly looking at me one more time. That love I felt when you would do was almost comedic in character because how could it have been? I had always felt so undeserved, but you paid no mind to my insecurities and faults.

It’s in that memory of laying with you, and how you revised the way I slept that I found peace. The way you insisted on laying between my legs felt so warm and weighty that in my absence, I cannot sleep. I burn for the way you used to keep me in bed long beyond my morning alarms. The way I would play tardy with you, and the world would pass us. I savor the moments for I was with you because for those moments, I felt whole with you in reach.

It’s in your soft fur that my fingers can still touch. The way you would acquiesce to my whims, begrudgingly but trusting. The peaceful confidence you displaced traversing the world. The way your brother relied upon you to make sure the sky was not falling, and that there was always a warm place to lay his head. The way I knew you would always come back around so I would never need to chase.

I wish I could wake to you. Those visions of it all being a terrible dream and that it was only a manifestation of a worry gone too far. For my days have gone to grey waiting for you to return through that front door that you left through. For that night I can’t escape, that stain on the concrete and grass; that deep red turned to various shades of rust and grey. Something broke inside for me that night, and I don’t know if it will ever be made right. I pray for you every night that you come home and pray that if you cannot that you at least are happy someplace else. Oh, how I miss you so much.

It then a tragedy of that night that these flashes of the pain of memory keep these bittersweet memories sufficiently somber. Through their experience, I become darkened further because how can a light like yours be put out. Like others in this situation, I blame myself, wishing I hadn’t let you out that night because I didn’t; you might still be here. I can’t escape you but nor do I want to. I just want the pain to finally subside so I can enjoy memories of you without this inexplicable dark from arising. A pain that is both a curse on my heart but also a blessing of your existence. I know with time, I will heal, but that will not make me yearn for your soft fur and heavy frame any less. It’s my arms I wish you would still be, wasting and watching days go by, making life a little easier and more worthwhile.

I remember when you first came home that I used to lay awake at night, making sure you were still breathing. I would sit there watching your tiny frame anxiously until I could see that hearty breath in and be relieved that you were still there. I would worry you would be gone from me any moment, but when that worry stopped you were gone, and I didn’t know how to pick up the pieces. That night I carried you and had hoped you were warm. I saw end the end of your breathing, and I felt you and your soft fur grow colder. I wish I knew to do more, but I was helpless in front of this fate.

It’s unfair, and I know life is never that way, but why did it have to be you. The blood on my clothes and the towel I wrapped you in, markers of a life that could not be spared. I suffer the trials and tribulations of the world knowing the punishment should fall on me but in a split moment, the world collapsed around you for no more reason than it feels to prolong a certain sense of wretchedness. I would take the world on my back to protect you from harm and yet I could not protect you from danger and chance. What purpose could lie in this, a lesson that could not learn some other way. That is to say I miss you, so dearly that don’t have words to describe. I would trade it all for you and I wish you were still here. I wish above all else that could see those bright green eyes look at me again and have those mornings with you. Oh for how much I love you Duo, I always have.

At the end of this, what I wish I could tell you is
until the stars burn out.
and the sky goes dark
I will always love you

Goodbye Duo, I didn’t deserve you, but you came to me anyways. I will take care of Hero and everything else. And I hope, deep in the purest place in my heart, to see you again.

Hoping for Wishes and Wishing for Hope

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Snow by Pascal Campion

I don’t know how to speak to hope, with the words I put to the page never seeming enough. The only reason I want to speak to hope in the first place is that I’ve been thinking about hope, or the lack thereof, in both myself and the world around me. It’s like gravity pulling dreams and aspirations down to the ground and burying them beneath the soil. It’s like a force is speaking little messages to people, telling them not to hope or pray for wishes because wishes are for the lucky and hope is for the foolish.

But what is hope except for a wish not yet to come, a part of our heart speaks out so loudly that ask us to take a chance on the world and its wonders and believe that more is possible? Hope is what the architect sees before the building, the engineer sees before the machine. Hope is an extension of the dreams but… dangerous thinking that is, because to aspire to leave your neck out to get cleaved and those who forsake hope, survivors of the dream guillotine, don’t want to get hurt again.

I can understand this apprehension and this desire to abandon hope. As you get older the world continues to test the willingness to hope and more of your life feels as if it were to be a graveyard for dreams. Those who are lucky, seem to be blessed in some way by the universe to continue forward unimpeded, but the for the rest of us, it feels as if every day we spend climbing mountains.

I’ve lost hope in people and institutions while I’ve been living in this stateless place. Maybe I’ve been an idealist all this time because I’ve been fortunate enough to guard my heart and hope enough not to get ravaged by the hands of time. Now my heart lays exposed and bloodied by the experiences of the past few years, marred and marked about the failings of hope and effort. I’m sure there are some that will believe that the death of ideals and dreams will give way to a clearer view of reality. Those who believe that setting the bar low only provides a more accurate view of the universe. The people who call themselves realists have been beaten and broken by the cost of dreams, see the world as one broken place and that if they dare to dream that dreams would be dashed and only pain would persist.

Maybe this is why I can’t stop myself from caring because I stop caring about this world and others that I give way to the death of my dreaming. That if I lose all hope and persist entirely without the expectations of others or the future, all that would be left is a shell of myself who goes through the motions without an end in sight. That it’s this foolish hope about the change in the world, that someday we find can find a better way and my efforts mean something that keeps me looking forward and coming back to the table.

It’s hard though, to hope in a place that has done nothing but balks at my dreaming and my aspirations. To call only for persistence through extraordinary circumstances as a solution. To feel isolated, alone, and not to be taken seriously. I can understand why I have so much hurt with hope because hope is the knife that continues to make me bleed. It’s the belief that things will get better here and that all my experiences have been a string of bad luck and not the result of my failings. Hope has me believe that the future is calling, and as long as I work towards it, things may go my way. It’s hard to continue to be as I feel hope as I experience the cleave of dream guillotine regularly. At times it feels as if these people and places are avatars of the universe acting like an executioner of my dreams.

I know the power of hope, though small at times, keeps me persisting ever longer with the belief that my continued progress will get me to eventually meet my dreams. I haven’t given up but man… it’s been hard, and at times I find myself hoping for wishes and wishing for hope.

More Morose than Most

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Moon Sea – Sun Kai

It’s difficult, this wandering mind that speaks of despair and death followed by feelings that prance and plague the heart and soul with solemn thoughts and wicked words. It is the invasive conceptions of a traumatized mind that form an inescapable umbra casting shadows in the light and swallowing hope whole. It is cruel premonitions of a life steeped in inadequacy that encroach like a predator starved for prey, slowly and with great care, only to strike right at my throat, choking me with metaphor and simile until I feel myself grasping for breath. I fear these moments because it leads me to believe the floodgates on my feelings have been loosed, and that I will forever feel that dreams of death will always taste a little sweet.

It scares me late at night or worse, during the day when I feel this crippling sense of lowness. This feeling that through all my toil, I am unequivocally bound for a life of ephemeral mediocrity followed but the subsequent oblivion of being forgotten. It paralyzes me, drowning me in this waking nightmare about a time that has never come and still yet never may be. The visions appear to me in the visage of a well-worn memory, as if to be assured premonitions warning me about the future that is to come. It sours my mood and makes me believe fate is a foe insurmountable.

It speaks to these insecurities of mine that those around me never put me in their mind. That conversations are short, and feelings are even shorter. That I am minuscule and momentary to the experience of those who are meant to serve as compatriots for a time on spaceship earth. It makes me read between the lines and question all statements. To take every action, movement, song, and verse as evidence of my accusatory paranoia. Though I override these thoughts and beliefs, I grow weary of fighting with myself to come home exhausted and unable to sleep.

It’s a menagerie of experiences that culminate to inexorable episode of multitudes of meloncoly. I try to see with eyes unclouded, but wounds in my heart remind me that this place I exist may never be as I want to see it. I have become attuned to my world, and I find it darker than the halls path I walk at night. This cold place makes this feeling echo loud and makes the noose tighten slightly around my dream.

These feelings come in ways and waves that I don’t know how to fend. I may have let too much in to be free of these feelings for the rest of my life. For now, I try and rest and write my way through it in hopes that by the time the morning comes that I can once again start again.

To Think of Knights and Dragons

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My Equal – Rasmus Berggreen

I’ve been thinking about knights and dragons lately. Wondering what a knight would believe once they started their journey and after it was over. Did they feel compelled by the dragon to act, to fight against all odds, to try and win when winning seemed like a far-flung fantasy? Did they go on this journey knowing the risks, the pain, the anguish they may experience? When a knight comes home, with scars and marks, do they let everyone know about the journey, the tribulation, the hurt and the pain? Would they tell a story of victory and triumph or costs and measured losses? I wonder if the knights would heal, from the pain inside and out, or let the scars of the fight die with them, that way the dragon does not claim another victim. What does the knight lose along the way to the dragon? Do they return a little less of themselves having done something so great? Does a knight need a dragon to be the hero they are meant to be? Can a knight be a knight with a dragon?

I’ve never asked for an easy life, an easy one sounded boring and banal, what I wanted was an adventure, to help others, to make the world a little bit better by leaving my mark on it. So I’ve set out on my own journey, like many others in kind, to find and learn to be better than anything I could imagine ever being. And sometimes, to be honest, this journey has kind of sucked. It’s never really been easy, and I don’t know why. I’ve had to fight my through everything, and I’m starting to believe that I’m pushing too hard for a thing I’m not meant to be.

It hurts so much, these dreams I carry on my back, which drive me from the nothingness to the light have also shackled me to my own form of hell. I do not regret having these dreams, but I fight and I fight against the coming current to feel like the stream doesn’t even want me there to begin with. That who I am is beginning to erode, and this path I was sure I was taking has started to crumble beneath my feet.

Can I run? Escape from this world for a second to catch my breath and become reinvigorated? If I were to take that much-needed reprieve would my dreams still be there when I return?

All I’m left with are questions, ones that I don’t know how to answer because I didn’t know the questions needed to be asked in the first place. I’ve tired and strained, my brain feels like it’s running on overdrive all the time. The only moment I seem to find reprieve from these burdens is I close my eyes to sleep, a dreamless sleep until I am forced to wake again.

I wonder about these knights because I have my face my own dragon and I’m wondering what will be left after I am through. Will I still be able to look in the mirror and see myself, or will I have lost so much from the fight that I become someone unrecognizable? I worry that I will lose parts of myself that I can never get back and that slaying the dragon, at the end of the day, won’t be worth it, that I will have lost too much.

I’m scared and tired, and I don’t know what to do. How did those knights, in those stories find their way?

I wish I had the answer, but I’ve been making it up as I go, maybe when this is all over I will have my own tale of knights and dragons, but for today I just have to fight and hope I don’t lose too much of myself along the way.

Don’t Avert Your Eyes

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Symbiosis – Mark Maggiori

I used to get in trouble a lot when I was younger, not for anything malicious, just my own flavor of rule-breaking like talking too much or being generally disorganized with school work. Whether it was at home or at school I could always count on being in some sort of trouble. I realize now that a lot was going on emotionally but that is a story for another time. When the pain and punishment came around I learned to acquiesce. To keep my head down and push forward because people couldn’t be mad forever, and pain, though uncomfortable, would eventually go away. At least that’s what I believed as a kid. Head down and push through.

I didn’t realize for a long time that this strategy only works in the short term. That each time you keep your head down and push you lose a bit more of yourself along the way. Before long you don’t know what you are pushing towards or away from. It’s becomes so natural that even the slightest hint of trouble you are attempting to push it away because you’re not standing for anything, especially not yourself. It an easier way to live, I know, I’ve lived that way, but its certainly not better.

I’ve seen a lot of things in my life, and experienced many different triumphs and tragedies but what this experience has taught me is not to avert my eyes. That when turmoil strikes it’s better to be looking up at what’s happening than ducking away into the darkness and hoping that things turn out okay in the end.

When I started looking up in these moments of pain, I wouldn’t say that it go rid of the pain but it allowed me to work through it. To not lose myself along the way. That I felt a strength well up inside, strength of character and conviction, that began to suffused itself into my every day life.

It’s hard not to close your eyes and look away when bad things happen. It takes courage to realize you may have gotten things wrong and could do better. The only way we progress is to face our fears and work through them. It’s the harder route but the right one. You may not even know if you are doing the right thing in the moment but 9 times out of 10 by having that courage things will work out better for you.

I can tell you from experience that even though life still happens and that difficult thing still occur, because I learned to look up and see my problems instead of just keeping my head down things would get better. Life is a lot of work, anyone who tells you differently is trying to sell you something. This is one of those things I don’t have much to speak to, it’s simple to say but hard in practice, and you NEED practice.

Don’t avert your eyes, look up and face your problems. I promise if you do, you will begin to feel like you are living again.