Carve my own path.
Looking back on it... forward... any which way really, I have always thought that this was exactly what I was doing. I have been through things, lived through things, caused things that some people would never understand; and then there are those who would. We underestimate people... especially the people we love because we are so terrified of getting hurt. We’re scared to be left behind, as if the truth as we know it were a total lie. That’s all the truth is... it’s what we know, as individuals; our interpretation of some cosmic unavoidable event. Maybe I’ll return to that thought, but for right now I want to stick with this one, which is that I am a horrible friend sometimes.
I owe a really close friend of mine a really big apology. A friend who, for nearly a year now, has seen me through the hits that just wouldn’t stop coming after I got back from Denver; we’ll just call them “Q.” We reconnected, as is usually our way... whether that is our paths constantly crossing (“cosmic unavoidable event”) or some innate ability to find each other when it almost seems out of dire necessity – I still haven’t figured out yet. For the most part, Q and I started talking again because Q needed someone to listen... and I needed to hear someone else’s voice inside my head besides my own. I could sit here and pretend that I have no idea how this situation switched, but I got over lying to myself a long time ago. So the truth, as I see it, would be that I needed someone other than myself to hear me.
You take people like that for granted sometimes. Believe me, I know, which is why I’m kicking myself at 5 in the morning because I’ve now been on both sides of that fence. Yeah, my life has royally sucked on occasion, and yeah, there are bad days and there are worse days... and there are really good freakin’ days. This does not give me any right to diminish Q’s truth, to make it seem as if Q’s problems – whatever they may be... I hope one day I’m trusted enough to find out – are somehow less than mine. There’s a deep, deafening sadness to it... that two tragic lives find each other so constantly. Are we hopeless? Is it because it’s something comfortable or is there something “cosmic” to our lives? The question I find myself asking a lot lately is... why Q?
Li-Young Lee said something that’s stuck with me ever since he came for a reading at Oswego last year. He told us to think of all the steps that have to occur in a precise order, at a precise time... to create one rain drop. Not his exact words, but they’re on my facebook somewhere. The point is, think of all the steps that have to occur in order for you to be held up at your front door because a delivery you’ve been waiting for all week has just arrived, and so you just miss the red light and you’re standing on that sidewalk with the blinking red hand telling you it is not your turn to go when that first rain drop falls, and it’s cold and it’s wet as it slips down your cheek. Imagine if that rain drop were specifically designed to fall on you...
Where are the coincidences? I’m blowing my own mind here. Let me back up a bit.
We underestimate people and their truths because, as prideful creatures, we hate to be disappointed; we hate to be wrong. No one is ever truly who we thought they’d be. Sometimes they can surprise us... with the good and the not so good. Over time, some of us learn to expect the worst out of people... we have to relearn how to let ourselves be surprised. I appreciate Q for everything. It wasn’t at all the person I expected to be trying to help me through some ridiculous – some not so ridiculous – things, but I wouldn’t trade Q for anyone else. That qualifies as a good surprise.
Carve my own path.
Thinking on it, I’ve always found more fulfillment in surprising myself then in waiting for other people to step up and surprise me. Which was always mom’s big advice – you can’t expect people to live up to any expectation you wouldn’t hold yourself to.
So I’ll leave those reading this with the amazing words of one Leigh Wilson, “She is a rolling stone. She gathers no moss.”
Blog Theme song:
Yours in a rolling Peanut Tin,
Carissa
No comments:
Post a Comment