Here I sit surrounded by all kinds of beauty taking on the ordinary shapes of day to day life. Overcome by the joy and wonder they bring to my life. Everything is beautiful; everything is filled with God, with the energy and purity that makes the world spin. Even the most ordinary object moves me to tears. A salt shaker, corroded with use is suddenly the most astounding art I’ve ever seen; the pile of discarded walnut shells even more the masterpiece.
It’s odd, the transformation I’ve seen in myself. So different now from the girl I was only a few years ago. Unhappy, overweight, just barely beginning to figure out what God was. Consumed in self-pity, yet switching over to complete selflessness, an equally bad alternative. My best friend, like me, looking upon the world with dismal eyes. Seven hours a night, three to ten talking through the easily impersonal vehicle of virtual speech that allowed us to get so close.
Then things changed and people started saying things that made sense. Unwittingly, I drove together my other half and best friend. On Halloween, my other of then past and future and I threw sticks at them to make them hold hands and we talked. We talked in person like we never had before, hanging back from the true love birds, making sense of our own feelings. If I’d been able to understand the things I did that night the first time, maybe it would have been different. But if the second time is any proof, it would have ended much the same. Still, on that night, walking along the highway, away from the location of the life I could never fully understand, my heart made the complete turn to selflessness.
Two months later, on a coincidental second holiday, I wrote the e-mail that led to the eventual low point of my life to date. For much the same reasons as the first, I found myself for another second time ending the “relationship” with my other. As time would have it, Christmas Eve was a bad day to begin with for my other. Vague, but obviously serious, family issues already had my other fighting for sanity as he wrote two e-mails in the wee hours of Christmas morning. The last any of us would hear from him for over a week. A week that would drive me crazy. A week that force me to once again flip the entire basis of my life.
Christmas went by with no more event. The day after I started asking around to hear any news of my other. The third day I started to worry; I began a series of e-mails never answered that would become increasingly hysterical. The fourth day I spent the night with my other half who unknowingly increased my fear for my other by reminding me his best friend was also mine. She made me remember all those lonely night when best friend reminded me of how much I was needed, how I kept him alive. Another day went by and I reread the e-mail, making up stories for unexplained half bits of information. One night, I grew into a panic, let a mere acquaintance hear me cry. I knew if I left the safety of my covers that night, I would never return. I found hope in an older friend and, exhausted, fell asleep.
The next morning I was ok again, though still shaken and changing. I decided I needed help, but was too proud to ask outright. So I started reading and listening and asking questions. Little by little, month by month, things got better. I learned to open up and say what mattered to me. I learned to put everything in perspective and the importance of hope. And I learned that I could take care of myself, fix my own problems. I taught myself and was taught by others how to be happy.
Slowly, lonely became a memory. Slower, that memory faded from day to day thought. Occasionally the impulse will return, but now I know how to fight it. I know to reject it, find hope, and tell someone. I know it will go away soon and I’ll return to my normal state of cheer.
It’s odd the way I feel today; perhaps I’m going crazy. But I don’t think I’d mind if everything stays looking so pretty.