You know, one of the great things about being younger is the capacity to believe in the unbelievable.
Not in terms of the fantastical, but in the terms of the mundane.
You can believe your parents are all powerful, that the world is right, that you'll always be friends with your friends and you'll be an Adult once you graduate.
We swing away from that as we grow up, I think. And in lieu of continuing to experience the hurt that causes us to grow up we choose to no longer believe and thus no longer be surprised when reality fails to hold up to our hopes. But that's not where we should stay.
It's brave to believe. To look at all the evidence you have to the contrary and decide you're going to believe it could be better this time. That despite everything it can be Closer to what you hope. It's another beat of the predominant theme in my life that throughout existence you're meant to acknowledge the pain you've accrued but never let it stop you or shape you away from walking forward.
Comprehend it isn't forever, but believe in it anyway.
Comprehend it will change, but believe in it anyway.
Comprehend it will hurt, but believe in it anyway.
It's wild to me how fantastical my relationships were growing up. We all wanted to be hopeless romantic porn stars and if you squinted just right we kinda were. It took throwing ourselves to the wind and Acting to get there and as we grew up we learned how bent out of shape our personalities could get. Our backs grew tired and our personalities stiff, continuing to stretch and throw ourselves and preform like that caused pain and exhaustion in ways we didn't feel till much later. But how fantastical it was the concept that people Believed in us. That We Believed we could.
Then we learned how to be healthier, that acting like that wasn't true to ourselves and that it would collapse eventually and that you can't keep up stretching like that forever. And we just kinda, or at least I kinda stopped. I stopped performing as much as I could, I tried to listen to myself and follow that, bereft of insight and direction of who I was due to a lifetime of who I wanted to be.
Nobody can keep the performance up forever, but who's to say we can't still enjoy the show. Who's to say that those fantastic acrobatic fucks can't Still be us. Who's to say we can't be someone For A While, and have that be exactly as much us as who we are when we're at home.
Intent matters, and who we intend to be matters just as much as who we are.
