I Choose Love

     Although seven thirty had me ready for bed, as I lie awake staring up at the ceiling I couldn’t help but wonder what I’m not thinking about.  It’s so easy for me to be in survival mode.  All the complicated webs of family and friendship and social bullshit fade away to a low hum, and my head finally sits right on my shoulders because all I have room for is making money and spending money.  The stress doesn’t even feel like stress.  For the first time since I’ve been here I feel like myself, let out of the cage, free.  I was a fool to think that blood means family.  You can’t make people love you, and even if they do it doesn’t mean they know how.  I sure as hell didn’t.  Now I’m alone and everything feels quiet and peaceful.  When will I learn that most times in my life I function best as a solitary creature.

     Of course December has felt colder than usual, and I am not so young or naive that I don’t understand how I got here.  And I do know that I had a large part to play on this road.  I still cannot regret my decisions, nor expect pity, nor understanding.  I cannot allow myself even to care that people disagree, or even hate me now.  Everyone has their choices in life, as I have had mine.  And yet there was so much they could not see because they never stood as I did along the river, with my toes in the sand and my shoes and socks shelved safely upon the rocks.  They could not understand that those moments after a long bike ride and a week of shitty tables, and even worse tips, petals of smoke swirling around us like faeries of conversation.  That we finally felt free in that moment.  That they couldn’t take the Earth away from us.  Not without a fight, and when our breath caught and the words finally came, what we finally felt was peace.  But how could I explain that?  Why would I justify it?  Just finding the words would take away the sacred nature of the moment, and still they couldn’t understand.  How to explain a sunrise to someone living in the dark?  It’s impossible.

     I have never put much emphasis on what has already passed, and this is no different.  I am who I am, I choose what I choose, I do what I think is right.  That’s the kind of person I was raised to be, but to hell with anyone that puts value claims on my life.  Especially to someone that has been absent for over ninety percent of it.  Fuck it.  They don’t need me, so why should I cry?  It’s no news to me that this family has never had problems being away from myself or my sister.  We are nothing but nice ideas to him.  He has set his mind to an easy peace with our absence.  So all in all. Fuck it.  I will always be a survivor.  Not even the rescinding of his love can take that away from me.  I have always chosen life and happiness.  I don’t care if it’s not your idea of moral, or good, or even productive.  It’s those little things in my life that he belittled that have made me happy to be alive.  He will not take my peace. 

     Sometimes life is the absance of things.

     In keeping up with the everyday I have forced myself to smile, and in life’s own surprising way that has been enough.  In that courage I have found the kindness that love and appreciation for life have always had to offer me.  I have seen the generosity of the spirit and the endless support of the kind of humanity that keeps us alive.  I have seen the kind of strength offered to me when people simply care.  Though my insides are on fire with a sadness that consumes every happy moment I am given.  I have seen, with both my eyes and my heart, that the soul can live as long as love exists, if only from the love we have for ourselves, for each other.  There is so much love in me now.

     I do not listen, and often it is my stubborn nature that guides me blindly.  I do not have patience for the quiet, and so I am constantly distracted by my own life’s noise.  Then suddenly I am met at the crossroads by none other than myself, and she is not an enlightened individual.  Rather she is all that I have disbanded and abandoned, hopelessly seeking an embrace I cannot afford her.  She is death, impatient, undeserving, selfish.  She would slit my wrists and cut my throat to drain me dry.  She would tie me up on the railroad tracks just to prove a point.  She was not meant for this world, and I want very much for her to leave me well alone.  Still what can I love if all I do is loath this girl, who is me, and true, and an honest part of who I am?  Perhaps what they call selfishness, I call a seeking, a call to guide myself to be grown, full, mature.  There will be a joy in finding her place.  There will be joy in taking her along this path.  I do not have to splinter myself to become what the world, or my family, or past lovers want.  They do not know where I stand because that knowledge is for me alone.

     I know that I came here to start something, but I have long since learned that we cannot control the expectations and motivations of other people.  Even the people we want to love the most in this world.  I have been abandoned by the most important man in my life once, and now after a lifetime of absence I know he cannot accept me as his daughter.  He would have me think that I must change, or be something else than what I am, but I will not hide what life and my decisions have made me.  I may love and exist differently under the same stars, but I do love and live and feel deeply.  I have a right to this life.  I have a right to determine the meanings of my stars, even on the darkest nights, even when the clouds roll in.  I have the right to live my life.  But most of all I am worthy of love.  Looking beyond the pain I know that he may not see me as deserving, but someday I will look at my life and it will be one of my own making.  I will see nothing but myself in the mirror, and he will not be part of it.  He will only be something I survived in spite of.  Fifty and he is so much the same as what he always was: a scared and prideful man.  I used to think that just because he did not raise his hands to his younger daughters that he had changed, but now I see he is still the same.

     Coming here may have led to a place full of disappointment and sorrow, but I refuse to let this define me.  I am not sorry for who I am, and I have not lived a life full of regret.  There is so much of me they could never know, there is so much darkness in my life that I could not find the courage to share.  Perhaps it was a small blessing, leaving something for myself.  Perhaps the nothings that escaped my lips were simply vague testings of the water.  I never felt connected, nor loved, nor truly interesting.  Their testaments always came as small surprises, and in the end they could not love me.  I am not who they want me to be, nor could I ever be.  Still I was surprised by their sentiments, hurt by what had hurt them, and apparently by my hand.  They could not accept my limitations as I had accepted theirs for a lifetime.  Sometimes it is so hard to accept what you have never known.  I watch the cool gray awning of a snowy dawn, and as the thin tendrils of warmth begin to ebb the biting cold of a night filled with tears I know that no experience in life is ever made in vain.  I had been able to do what I had come here to do.  I no longer need ask myself ‘what if?’ or ‘could it be?’  I am the stronger than he could ever be, the man who has had everything and easily.  I will be what I want in this world.  I am young, but I know that I trust myself.  I am foolish, but I am a quick learner.  I am impulsive, but I don’t make the same mistakes twice.  I feel fully, and I will live what I create.  I do not need the world to accept me.  I need only accept myself.