I Don't Know
It seems that peace should not be such a difficult thing to find. I mean, I've got everything going for me in this life. I'm free, employed, loved, sheltered, fed, fueled, fucked, befriended. I've got money in the bank and things around me that bring me pleasure. I've got goals and things I can enjoy thinking about getting in the future. I'm healthy and whole. The list of things that aren't wrong is too long to imagine. I'm creative. Loving. Loved. Goofy. Engaged. Curious. I meditate and do yoga and go on long walks and do art and read and write and paint and on and on.
And yet I pace. I want another beer. I sit in my parked truck and cry. I grit my teeth.
Sometimes I catch a glimpse of my face in a mirror or a window and I'm scared of the guy looking back at me. He's so fucking mean looking. Like he'd love nothing better than to knock your teeth down your throat.
*
That's not who I want to be.
*
It's elusive, peace. A sense of balance, a sweet joy for the simple act of breathing in and out.
*
It's okay, though.
I'll find my way to it again.
*
I know I will.
*
And yet I pace. I want another beer. I sit in my parked truck and cry. I grit my teeth.
Sometimes I catch a glimpse of my face in a mirror or a window and I'm scared of the guy looking back at me. He's so fucking mean looking. Like he'd love nothing better than to knock your teeth down your throat.
*
That's not who I want to be.
*
It's elusive, peace. A sense of balance, a sweet joy for the simple act of breathing in and out.
*
It's okay, though.
I'll find my way to it again.
*
I know I will.
*
posted by tearful dishwasher at 6:38 PM
3 Comments:
Missed you. Glad you made your way back here. And you will make your way back to a sense of peace as well.
What an empty thing for me to say. Yet I mean it. I mean it from my own experience, from knowing everything is cyclical. From knowing you cannot exist in this place for the rest of your life. It's just not going to go down like that.
scott, i find myself wanting to make all these astute comments about age and how our perspective changes as we grow older, how the forties are such an anxious, frantic, unresolved time much of the way. but it's all really bullshit, i know that, and there is no better time than the right now, this morning, this beautiful morning just before the dawn, the freshness of another day. i say this because last night is still fresh on my mind, when the fucking knees gave out again, and the pained face in the mirror belonged absolutely to me, and the pellmell end of it all came rushing up again and i could look back on a life that is totally unresolved, totally without any true sense of accomplishment. how much more can a person do, i wondered. is this it? can this really be all there is? and yet ... and yet ... here is the loveliness of another morning, the gratitude for simply being allowed to continue pushing on, to reach out for whatever there is. i want to tell you not to despair. but despair is somehow the beginning of acceptance. and what greater lesson to be learned than to realize there will be no life but this, that we must lean on the reality to find the dream. i pray you will find a measure of peace, that there is some way to hold the conflicts in check, but you're a warrior, scott, and without the battles you cannot see into your own heart. you have been permitted something, though, that few of us are given -- you will have been able to give voice to that despair, with an eloquence that serves to lift up and enlighten the lives of those you touch. no saint will have given more. what a precious gift, scott. what a blessed life.
Lynn-
Thanks, girl. One of the good things about being in my forties is that I don't buy into my own unhappiness as deeply as I used to. It kind of just washes over me, but it doesn't kill me.
And today is much better, thank you very much.
Jim-
This is a wonderful gift you've given me.
You are too kind. It is hard to say the simple things deeply and have them not sound corny, but there it is.
Thank you, friend.
yrs-
Scott
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