It’s New Years Day. Blinding light leaks in through the blinds and I am much too afraid to check the time. I don’t dare to get up to feel just how bad my hangover is. I stay where I am, awkwardly collapsed on a familiar couch. Flashes of last night flood my memory. There was a lot of love orbiting around the room and so many times I truly felt like the Sun. There was also a lot of residual pain strewn about the space–gravity seemed so much denser among the banners and shimmering balloons, as we took our last glances back at what was quite a harrowing year for many of us.
It’s New Years Eve. My friend is telling me how thankful he is for me. How, in spite of this year trying to break him at almost every possible turn, I was a part of so much good. It’s hours before midnight and already in his arms I know that this coming year will be a time of bonds and promises kept. I have found my place. I thank him for giving me a sense of home for the first time in a long, long while.
So we lift our glasses in an attempt to lift our spirits. But still, I feel an air of somberness to the celebration. As if a great battle had been won, but at a terrible price none of us were prepared to pay. Perhaps this was a projection I was painting on their faces, more than a sense of empathy. It’s true, I get so often confused between the two.
Sometimes, life demands these tolls and we call it ‘loss’. To not pay them, arrests you in arrears. There are debts to be paid, and the levees are inescapable; such is the cost of living. This is simply the way of things. It’s neither inherently bad, nor is it altogether completely devoid of goodness–it just is.
I wonder how many times I have said this to people? Too much and not enough.
I have taken great solace in a poem in the ‘The Prophet’ by Kahlil Gibran, “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked…The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?”
Throughout the evening I kept finding myself saying that I will not count this last year as a loss, but rather a time of lessons learned. Lessons that will spare me from repeating mistake after mistake at the cost of time; the only true currency and that, in itself, is a construct I suppose. I am rambling again. I hope there is coffee somewhere…I check the time, and I wish I hadn’t.
I have said pain has been my greatest professor. There is no gain without sacrifice. My pain has made me wise, but I paid for this wisdom. I am slowly turning grey digesting in the voracious belly of time. I have to count the exchange as equivalent; I must. The purpose and perspective must be assigned. There has to be a point, and the point is yours to make and keep sharp, to throw at the heart of some terrible and great beast. The heartbreak, the loss, the innumerable times I strayed far from my path knowing full well I was getting lost on purpose, have all indeed weathered myself weary and took things from me I will never get back. And this is simply the way of things.
It just is.
I am hollowed out by knives. I am as a canyon, pour your rivers into me. Make of me a container for all the love I have since denied.
Because I have paid the cost a thousand times over. I am here to collect. I have won this love. I deserve this and I am so tired of hearing anyone say anything to the contrary. I am so damn worthy. We are so damn worthy of this.
Let’s take what is ours.
Happy New Year, my friend.
Love,
Ian