So far, so good

[Alendar]

I look at my days now with new eyes and try to describe them to you. But I know that they seem strange sometimes to the lonely and lost. Many do not believe I was once angsting and aching in a lonely room, a lonely college dorm, a lonely classroom, a lonely home. I was angry and confused and desperate for love.

I'm curious about those who struggle now with the same pain I once struggled with. What words could I say that would ease their pain? Do they want it eased?

The journey to selfhood is bizarre, but it always leads you back to where you started. The same rocks and ravines lie across your path, but they seem different the second, third, fourth time around. You become nimble and agile, and the pounding of your heart in your ears is a delicious sound, rather than a panic and a dread.

You know that the rainbow ends beneath your feet. That you are perpetually home, its just getting comfortable in its folds. The sun has always been warm on your face, you just forgot for a while.

What words can I say that won't insult your personal experience? Accept the misery, wallow, accept the sadness, mourn the ridiculous, laugh when the joke is not funny, be ashamed of everything, take the world on your shoulders, exaggerate and dramatize to the extreme, become truly lazy and pathetic, and then...

let go, decide you are done, that your emotions are not your masters, that you have been free of everything but your own fear. Know that death will come, and that you can never catch up, that you can never be worthy, that you will always be a fool and a poor wit and a dullard at dinner conversation, a fraud, a nothing in someone's eyes. We can never live up to our own expectations.

Fail spectactularly, embarass yourself at least twice a day, be rude to the poor person behind the counter, escape your own suffering for a second, then look back and consider that it was all just a choice you made long ago, and that now you are ready to choose differently.

You are your own victim. Beat yourself up, but do it with panache! Next time your down on yourself, swing for the fences. Knock your block off! Then, when you are beaten, maybe apologize, give yourself a hand up, get a cool rag from the kitchen and gently wipe your bruises.

It takes all kinds, and you are all kinds. You are the mayhem, the tornado, the shriek in the wind, the maelstrom, the violence endured. When it is dark, it is your hand that is the lantern's hood.

[Mrs. Alendar]

Isn't he just the cat's pajamas? And I get to live with him every moment of the rest of our lives together... You haven't lived until you've sat across from him over exquisite pasta and discussed Thermopylae and the Spartans and the fall of the Roman Empire...we really did that last night. Our existence is a constant unwrapping and wonderment now...

[Chez moi]

Thank you, Alendar, for making us think. Especially about helping ourselves up... who else will do that? Who else can do that if we don't want to get up?

[larry kremis]

"What words could I say that would ease their pain? Do they want it eased?"

Wow! Quite profound and moving indeed. I'm glad your suffering is done and that you've learned from it. I almost feel guilty because love and happiness seemed to come easily for me. I know the helpless feeling when you want to wave a magic wand and make sadness in others disappear. My very best wishes to you and sdl.