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my-so-called-life

It’s laughing with your friend at a time when you shouldn’t. It’s the sweat in your palms wanting to know someone you see and the pit in your stomach when they actually see you. It’s being touched by hands that aren’t your own. It’s the thrill of an escape that almost wasn’t. It’s the embarrassment you feel, naked for the first time. It’s helping a friend find something they lost. It’s a smile, a joke, a song. It’s what someone does that they like doing. It’s what someone does that they like remembering. It’s the thinking of things you may never do and the doing of things you may never have thought. It’s the road ahead and the road behind. It’s the first step and the last and every one in between, because they all make up the good life.

I wondered what happened when you offered yourself to someone, and they opened you, only to discover you were not the gift they expected and they had to smile and nod and say thank you all the same. Often we allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. We lose many irreplaceable hours brooding over grievances that, in a year’s time, will be forgotten by us and by everybody. No, let us devote our life to worthwhile actions and feelings, to great thoughts, real affections and enduring undertakings. It's terribly amusing how many different climates of feeling one can go through in a day. I've been thinking a lot about secrets. How sometimes secrets keep people from feeling like they belong, and sometimes secrets make you feel like you do belong.

As we grow older, it becomes difficult to just believe. It’s not that we don’t want to, but too much has happened that we just can’t. That’s all we are — just stories. We only exist by how people remember us, by the stories we make of our lives. Without the stories, we’d just fade away.