Welcome to my pre-existing state of being

I'm not sure to what purpose I'm putting this out there. Other than to hear something else besides the roar of useless complaints and random statements of drunken nights. Something else besides the constant buzz of a million things that don't matter. Maybe to remind myself of things beyond the four town radius of my life thus far. To reaffirm my belief that there is a core to people beyond what they're going to do this weekend. That you're walking this road for a purpose and not just because you're killing time.

Maybe...to remind myself of a time when things were bad, so I can remember what it feels like to step into the light and out of the darkness. When there were not yet words invented to describe the pain. When colors were actually less bright. When I had stopped eating because it seemed everything tasted of hot salty tears. When everything I owned was covered in a dull sadness that wouldn't wash off. To remind myself what years devoid of passion and want can do to the human spirit. Maybe, to remind myself what it feels like to grow old ten times faster than you're supposed to.

And maybe to remind myself of something else. A seemingly small feeling. Tiny, but reoccurring, resembling a heartbeat. Often times, very often, almost undetectable and therefore presumed dead.

I was told over and over that there was hope. So many times that hope became to me like a fairytale, or a story from the Bible. Something that was, that isn't anymore. Something that people find pleasant to remember, especially at night if the wind is very cold. Like Snow White or Moses, hope didn't apply to my life. No one could tell me how to make hope appear, where to get it from, or what it looked like. Apparently I was simply supposed to produce hope from the thin air. Shut my eyes tight, hold my breath, concentrate and it would appear. This legendary hope that would be my well of crystal clear water, after having traveled so long in the desert.

Maybe this is to remind myself that behind the darkness and under the sadness, to the left of the despair and just after the bitterness, was the thing ten years of heavy pain couldn't crush.

To remind myself of what is left at the bottom of our ocean when the sand and gravel has been cleared away, after the water has dried up.

Of what is left when the rubble of our tragedies has been lifted and the remnants of our anger pushed to clear a path.

To the purpose of pushing aside the sand and gravel, and rubble and remnants long enough to give the thing that keeps us breathing a little fresh air, a little sunlight, if only for a minute. To say that it is no fairytale or legend. It is no Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus. This time I have proof that it's real, and it is no small feeling at all.

XIX.
The Mystery of Pain by Emily Dickenson

Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.

It has no future but itself,
Its infinate realms contain
Its past, enlightened to percieve
New periods of pain.


VI.
Hope by Emily Dickenson

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

This will be my account of the reality of Hope and the story of the Pain. Every ones Pain is different. Some is physical, some is emotional. Some Pain exists only in our silent dark nights. All are intangible. My goal in creating yet another blog for the masses, is to take the fear away from the Pain. Mine and yours, whatever form it may take. To understand the Pain's purpose in our lives and why we must go through it, or nothing else is possible. Hope and the Pain are older than the begining of time. They are the first thing to exist and the last thing to leave us, and they are what it's all about.

-N