Pure happiness…
True happiness…
No
I can only remember
The terrible things that have stuck in my memory like leeches
There to remind me of the way life goes wrong
I can remember the tears
The pain
The loneliness
Oh god, the loneliness
It makes me sick to my stomach just hearing the word run through my mind
Episodes of darkness like scenes from a movie
Lost, betrayed, black dreams, snout like a werewolf, teeth like a rat, and there they are
Lying dead
What are you, some depressed teenager
And here I am in a cage
Can’t get out of here
No one’s listening
Get me out of here, God damnit, get me out
Sorry. Can’t.
But wait
There’s a sort of light that’s trying to slip through the bars on the window
And then it all comes rushing in, rushing back to me
Flooding
Like sun, like white, foaming water, like birdsong and rain
How could I have missed it?
The dark stands out because everything around it is so light, so beautiful, so full of joy it cannot be contained into a body or a face but bursts out into the air and fills the snow globe earth
And everything is coming back
My mother and father, they have the warmest eyes, the sweetest smiles—did I not know before?
So we played with the dinosaur toys on the floor of the basement, my dear redheaded friend
And you and I, well you and I laughed more than we slept, and we laughed through 10 years until you left
I remember the magic too, and it was real, I could do spells and I spoke with creatures far more beautiful and wondrous and wise than myself, and the forest was alive with the things that I could see
And then, you looked my polar opposite but in soul we were the same
More and more best friends came
And so did the books, so many and so fast, I skipped pages in the middle but cried to read the end since the story couldn’t last
But I was wrong about that too, see, the story did last, and I remember them all
As I grew I was surrounded by literature that understood me more than my own parents and I think I must’ve known all my life that I would become a writer and that nothing else could fill the void
I might want to be a scientist or an actress but that’s too bad, if I don’t write, I will most certainly go mad
Well when I discovered good music, man, those headphones never came off and they’re still on and the soundtrack plays all day and night
There’s too much, it’s all filling up too fast, the ocean because I think I’m part seal, the mountainsandthetreesandthelionsandmichelangeloandkerouacandonehundredfaces
This was like therapy to me
Happiness has always been there and always will be there
But it is not without pain
Some treasures are found
Some treasures are made
I still remember the first time I cried on my birthday and I was so confused that I was sad on a day like today but it might have been the first time I realized that time didn’t last for anyone
And that might have been the beginning of the bittersweet
And the nights I lay in frozen panic because eternity was a void
And I was so so so so small
But it was also the moments of self-actualization and recognition of the simplest things that meant the most to me
And the fact that I was alive, and conscious
Conscious of the agony, conscious of the grief, conscious of the joy, conscious of the love
I could see the square of light on the mahogany bureau
I could see the back of the yellow school bus and the blue sky
I could see the apple tree and the wide, wide sea
I can feel and see and know and dream
And there is nothing left to be
But happy