darkness and light
posted by
imani
, Monday, June 18, 2012 at 12:52 AM, in
Labels:
freefall
they say the sky is always darkest just before dawn.
if that is the case then the sun is not exactly shining in my side of the world. it is the exact same dawn, breathing the exact same perennial air of loneliness i usually get just before i turn a year older. i feel like i have been walking, traveling, treading on that paved avenue for days at no end.
this time, the first thing i heard is not a knock on the door or the alarm clock reminding me to wake up, get my act together and prepare for work. it's a thunderclap.
and in exactly eleven days, i will turn twenty nine.
i do not feel "old" or "ancient." it is not that kind of feeling that pushes me to re-think and re-evaluate my life. it is the notion of whether or not i have actually lived it.
this pseudo-depression, as i would label it, started when my father passed away. i just turned fourteen the year he succumbed to heart attack which lodged him into a coma, the same day my mom was supposedly celebrating her 48th birthday. what happened was she spent it in the hospital, and for an entire week, my family and i split our time between visiting my father, going to school and taking care of the chores at home.
that incident gave me a front row seat to a person's humanity - in short, someone's existence and death. and every year after that, i feel this pang inside my heart, a vague sense of not knowing if i am living up to my dad's wishes for me and my family's expectations of me.
i get that gnawing pain regardless of what i have accomplished or what i can still accomplish. it is as if my heart gets broken once a year - thinking and somehow knowing that things will forever be different because our lives have taken an entirely different direction when we lost my dad.
i am not blaming dad for this, no. it is just something that i could never seem to shake, no matter how i keep myself busy and no matter what i do to get my mind off of the idea of growing old and not being sure if the life that i am leading made any difference in someone else's existence - if i was at all able to touch lives or make someone's day better or if i was able to affect change, one way or another.
i do not want to discount the fact that i now have someone who is as resolute and as unwavering as i could ever dream anyone to be - my lifetime - and i am grateful that she talks to me when i get quiet, or when she feels that i am lost in my own thoughts. i am grateful that she tries to find a way, a means to take me out of that solitary, lonesome space.
i am not sure when i will ever be able to live through a year or some days without ever thinking of my own inadequacy or my own incapacity, but i also do not want to waste meaningful days when i know someone is loving me and looking after me regardless of my pain or my mess or my shortcomings.
maybe the storm will cease when i start to appreciate that there are some things that i can place upon my shoulders, that there are some things that i need to learn, that there are some parts of me that need mending - and that i may be drawn to darkness to begin with but i should also look at the one shining her light upon me.
