I rarely feel a need to be serious, but when I do it has thoughtful intent – I’ve been thinking a lot about how optimistic I’ve become lately. It seems like only yesterday I was this anti-social person living in my plaza apartment, leaving only to buy groceries or go to Target for books and home furnishings. I finished an entire series of books in 4 days because I never stopped reading. I redecorated my entire apartment in less than 2 weeks because I never spent any time out of it. This doesn’t sound a lot like me, does it?...
Think present day; Monday – I’m usually recovering from the weekend (this session I have class on Mondays). Tuesday – I’m either doing dance or watching my comedian friends do stand up. Wednesday – I normally have class (although I don’t this session.) Thursday I have class this session and I usually go listen to Hopper do his acoustic show. (Somewhere in here I make time to see my gay/other friends.) Friday and Saturday I normally see Hopper’s full band play/babysit Cooper/travel out of town/or just hang out with friends. I am SUPER busy person, socially… this wasn’t always the case…
Tragedy. It rocks some of us to our core. It challenges the very beliefs that have been instilled in us since birth. It makes us see all the BAD that exists in the world. Sometimes we recover – but only after a severe mental/physical/emotional breakdown of some sort or enough time passes, we eventually start to find ourselves again. For some of us, it’s watching a person we’ve been close to since birth, slowly deteriorating until they are a former shell of themselves – for others, it’s the physical loss of someone we’re close to. Whatever the reason; death, disease, loss of love, financial loss – tragedy SUCKS.
It makes us completely different people. I hate the saying “everything happens for a reason.” Equally as obnoxious is when people say “what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger.” I think these are both false. Everything happens because some random chain of events set something devastating into motion that could not be stopped, even by fate. As for getting stronger from it? Hardly. Most of us spend a good chunk of our days wandering around with shattered pieces filling the space a happy heart used to dwell. It’s overwhelming. Sometimes it’s so much to take in; you can physically hear your heart struggling to beat…THAT is tragedy. That is what it feels like. For those who have never experienced it? Well, you are a LUCKY person…for those of us who can recall multiple instances in which we literally weren’t sure we could survive how grief stricken we’ve become – it’s a lot to take in. It’s a lot to expect another person to understand/put up with/want to help you get over.
For me? Personally, tragedy started in my life at age 7 when my very best friend in the entire world (my grandfather) passed before my eyes like an episode of our beloved soap opera (All My Children) before nap time. The memory of Neapolitan ice cream with Mr. Good Bars or peppered raw turnips for snack time will forever be a part of my childhood. It’s really the small things you miss about people. The smell of a certain aftershave, or a little red truck picking you up from kindergarten…to present day; watching my grandmother, whose helped raise me since birth, struggle to remember who I am.
Really – my point is, tragedy is awful. It really is. It becomes part of us. The point in all this is finding out how to hold on to the good memories while at the same time, letting go of the bad. We build walls. We figure out how to keep people from getting close to us by shutting them out. Then one day, we realize we want someone else in our world because we need the good with the bad. The happy with the sad. Most of all, we realize tragedy exists so we can appreciate how precious and rare GOOD moments are.
Fast forward---Saturday afternoon…playing “farm animals” and “the colored ball goes down the spinney hole while air pops them back up through a tube while an obnoxious song plays” with my baby nephew. These are the moments I really understand what joy is. Seeing a messy toddler covered in Chipotle with an infectious giggle is enough to make anyone’s day – well definitely mine. It’s the moments that overwhelm you with happiness to the point you think your heart with burst (in the good way.) Pretty sure (upon Sarah’s command) he said “Auntie,” or at least something that closely resembled it. That’s a win for the day, if you ask me.
On that same token – when it comes to relationships – we all have bad things in our lives. We’ve all been through SOMETHING that was not easy and, quite possibly, damaged some of the good in us. Some people have varying degrees of tragedy, while some figure out how to balance what we want out of life with what we’ve had the pleasure and eventually loss of knowing. We grow. We understand each other in ways we never thought possible. What the real challenge here is--is this ability to be patient. To understand some of us have been through things so big, we can’t possibly wrap our heads around expecting another person to relate. The surprising thing is, if you try sometimes – well, you just might find…you get what you need. ~K
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