Happy/Forgiveness

Continuing from the last post, here is the next installment of I Will Not Hurt Myself/I Will Not Hurt Others.

“Sooner or later in life, everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they drive from the human condition which is opposed to everything infinite. – Primo Levi

My childhood was happy, with parents who scrimped and saved to not so much give me things, but experiences. If you were to peel back the veneer, things were not rosy. The same messy shit that goes on in everyone’s family was there. But I was shielded from it so that my perception was just mostly happy. So much so, that as a young adult I felt like I needed to needed to explore what it was to be things like miserable, desperate, hungry, dirty, endangered, dangerous. I hurt myself often and in every way I could. I took others with me. I wouldn’t be the person I am now if I hadn’t, but I’ve had to forgive myself everything. It may have made me cynical. Happiness or unhappiness is not worth chasing of itself. Creating something that will last, green things growing, time spent with people I love, laughing; that is without apology, where I want to go. 

A prayer of sorts

​Thank you for the weird family I had.
Thank you that he didn’t kill me.
Thank you that he didn’t steal my hope.
Thank you for the friends who tell me when I’m full of shit.
Thank you for books.
Thank you for swimming in the ocean.
Thank you for crows.
Thank you for the smell of lilacs and fresh coffee.
Thank you that I still have a sense of humor.
Thank you that I didn’t leave early.