I've been reading these books about people and their lives, and it makes me aware of how the stories of life around me are no less interesting than the fictional ones. Stories of goodness, of love and high ideals. Of sorrow and loneliness, betrayal and alienation. Of growth and hope, of difficulties and a spirit strong enough to live through it all and see a light far ahead somewhere. Small everyday magic. Eventual happiness for at least some, I hope. I hope I can be a positive character in the stories of my friends. Watching the events unfold, trying to be there at the right time in the right way. Not always sure what is right. Not always up to doing the best possible thing even when I do have a clue what it is. But I would like to think doing the best possible thing I can at each particular moment. All that any of us can do really. I read these books about how people hurt each other so much and it's a thing to be thankful for that at least for the moment I am free from all that. I'm in this little corner of time and space where people are nice to each other, where there is caring and mutual support, where it's quiet in a good way - peaceful and calm. Where there is friendship that is worth so much. I don't know where the story will go from here, but right now I'm just glad and thankful for this.
All the while it's so hard to see where my own story is going. A new start in a familiar world - similar to the one I remember from a year ago, but not quite the same. Not really sure if I should be thinking of this as a start or a continuation. Places I know, people I know... but the thread got lost a year ago. The overall thread. I thought I could come back to it, to make something new and beautiful grow further from two individual threads, but it turned out my lifelong friend wasn't one and my revered ideal wasn't one, either. Maybe it was just the nature of the period to find everything a dead end. I don't know. Maybe I'm not supposed to know what my True Destiny is or if there is such a thing. Just trying to figure it out, trying to understand what is truly meaningful about my life. My conclusion so far: assumptions based on your life thus far may tell you little about what is yet to come. Especially when you're still young and everything around you is in flux.
I mean, everything may have happened the only way it could've happened. Inevitable. Everybody doing the best they can. And you know what, it doesn't matter. I feel angry and disappointed. ...and even now I suspect I'm feeling that simply because it's something clear and passionate, a string of the old story that hasn't quite died yet. I go over the old songs, blogs, emotions because at least there's the familiar nostalgia. Memories of the pieces of the past I had to let go. Maybe not even permanently, but it will never be the same again. Two bubbles broken and vanished into air. I suppose the fantasy of the human ideal couldn't have stood the test of real life. But the friendship one could've. Should've. But then again, it should've been more than a bubble. And thing is, I'm anxious to move on. I guess there just hasn't been much of a storyline since then. A gray area between the old and the new. Immersing myself in the stories of others.
Oh well. I have earthy friends, real friends rather than phantasms of air and fire I've concocted to project my ideals. Something to appreciate.
