Getting Personal

Today, I read a lot of true-life stories on a favorite blog of mine, Sasha Is A Monster. Sasha is also the managing editor for Evil Beet Gossip, which is a fantastic site in its own right. I read and read and read until I felt that my poor, breaking heart could bear no more heartache for some of these writers.

It's amazing the stories that some people have. The trials that they've experienced that have either made them or have broken them. The things that make these people tick. The things that pushed them to the brink of emotional or mental breakdown, only to be pulled back in by the reins of life's funny things. Funny, funny things.

What is it, really, that keeps us from driving ourselves crazy at night as we lie in bed and pore over whatever it is that happened to have consumed that particular day? Is it the good that keeps us going? Or is it the challenge of overcoming the bad that keeps us on? Is it fear of failure or fear of success that keeps us on an even keel?

These are questions that I mindlessly (or over-mindfully) ponder day in and day out. These, I think, are the true secrets to living. Not whether or not there's a God (that's simple faith on the individual's part), or if we've fulfilled our "destinies" (because, really, who's to say what is whose destiny? Maybe there are several things that are to be our destiny?).

I think about my own, personal highest times in life; times spent with family and friends, surrounded by love and happiness and the absolute scent of opportunity drifting along the winds. Those days of driving down the road, carelessly with the music blaring from the speakers and living that sheer joy that is what life is supposed to epitomize. Supposed to.

I also think about my lowest points in life, where I had locked myself in the bathroom to take forty-five minute showers, in the dark, twice a day, (sometimes three times) because I felt comfort in my wet, dark, secluded "closet". I think about lying awake, waiting for an ex to come home to wonder what kind of mood he was going to be in that night. What we were going to fight about. If I was going to get hurt. Again. Nights of upset and distaste so liquid in my mouth that I could barely choke down water without the bile biting at the back of my throat and threatening to burn another hole into my weary stomach lining.

Life is such an amazing thing when you think about it. Both great and terrible, kind of like the Wizard of Oz, if you've ever seen that movie. (And if you haven't, you're absolutely banished from my planet. Get off. The island.) Amazing, are these opportunities that we seize by the horns and equally amazing the way we sometimes so frugally allow these same mind-blowing opportunities to pass us by. I use the word 'amazing' here in a sense of both horrific and wondrous, because really, isn't life both horrific and wondrous, all at the same time?

Religion and philosophy aside; what is the purpose of these trials? To see how much the human spirit can endure before breaking?

I've been to the point where bend equals break equals breakdown and it's not easy putting those pieces back together again. Honestly, how much can one person endure? And is it fair? Do some inherently receive the short end of the stick consistently? Why? Are there any answers to these questions?

"We die only once, and for such a long time." --Moliere

And honestly, any joking aside. Think about this next point, not for what it appears to be, but for what it really is:

What if the hokey pokey is what it's really all about?