Haiku #28 went up today. Nightfire #6 might, and it might not. I am forcing myself not to go crazy over it. I’m making my first priority for the rest of this month to breathe. I have to accept the things I cannot change, so to speak. I have to be okay with it. There’s just been too much going on all at once. The past year, almost to the day, has been an emotional tornado for me. Everything’s been happening so fast, and there hasn’t been a moment to stop and catch my breath.
Last summer was devastating for me. My two best friends divorced. One of them severed all ties with me and the rest of our circle of friends. I was utterly crushed. I think I must have cried myself to sleep every night for six months. The friend I kept found himself facing homophobia directly for the first time, and he all but crumbled beneath it. For a time, it seemed I’d lost him too. I’ve spent a year wondering why the world is so cruel, wondering where everything in my life went so horribly wrong without warning. I had been so happy before. I was perfectly content. Then the ground caved in beneath my feet. It was all I could do just to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
The backdrop to all of my personal chaos has been an insane war that just won’t end, a war that has taken friends and relatives off to fight and possibly die for a cause most of them don’t even agree with; an economy that is in a bleak downward spiral, gas prices that are getting so high that I wonder how I can manage to keep driving all the way to Mesquite every day for my day job, how I can drive anywhere at all if it gets much worse; a mindless president nightmarishly re-elected who would love nothing better than to have all of America’s poor killed off by war and hurricanes, a president who has fought to amend the Constitution to prevent true equality, the real American dream, from ever coming to fruition; infants suspected of terrorism turned away at American airports, while actual terrorists still get away with murder in London; a hurricane that wipes out New Orleans and takes thousands of lives, while those who survived are left adrift, labeled “refugees,” treated still as less of a priority than the president’s alleged desire to take democracy to the people of Iraq. It’s a world I feel completely at odds with. I can’t seem to wrap my mind around the reality of it all. It seems impossible to cope.
Over the past several months, my best friend was suddenly married and expecting a baby. This weekend, Sebastian was born, and I began to see that mythic silver lining that people are always going on about. Perhaps the vast, somber cloud that has covered my sky will actually pass, and the sun will shine for me once more. Still, it’s something to adjust to, and that’s why I am taking a moment just to breathe. Now that there seems to be some good in the world, maybe I can finally begin wrestling with all the horrors I’ve seen. Now I have something to fall back on if it gets overwhelming. This new baby who represents hope and so many bright possibilities.
I’ve decided it’s time to break out of this monstrous shadow. I need to follow my bliss and find a new direction. I’m going to start working with the youth group at my church again, for one thing. I’m going to keep writing, because I would go mad if I didn’t, but I’m not going to pull my hair out when things don’t come together by the deadlines. I am going to accept it and keep on moving. It will all come together in time. Everything is going to be fine. No mater how dark the night, there will always be a dawn. I think I’ll hold on to that.