simple

“Simple, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. It is dependent on what an individual can or can’t understand, accept, and/or handle as a part of their life’s story.”
-April Gerard, Whitley County Habitat for Humanity, best friend for more than half my life. Quoted on 8-31-08

This is the response I get when I question life. That some days it is so very difficult to pick my head up & take another mere step; yet other days seem to float by in fairy dreamland. My wistful ponderings, hoping & wishing that each day could be so easy, so ‘simple,’ lead to this discussion. The conversation then turns to being able to take one’s own advice & finally, into “Life’s happiness is followed by life’s misery – hand in hand. Take the bad with the good. But what to do if the bad outweighs the good? And who is in charge of the measuring? HOW do we measure?”

Who has these answers? Why even ask the questions?? Instead, we each swallow the doubt and go on to face another uncertain day. Is it really all that bad? How many times have I thought to myself, “I can NOT live another day like this; there is NO point”. Yet here I am – mostly thanks to some very supportive, very watchful BEST friends. As I sit here, I look back at what I have ‘suffered’ through & now simply wonder what it was at that moment that made it seem like the end.

I am cursed by my own nature. My own strength & my own stupidity combined. It is the balance of the universe, of life. Opposites must come together to make a whole.

On occasion I haphazardly walk thru the library picking up books, flip thru to the mid-section of the book & start reading. If that particular paragraph can hold my attention onto the next paragraph, I’ll check it out & read it at home. Often in one night. Once something catches my attention I have a very difficult time putting it down. Last week I picked up a book titled “Tethered” by Amy MacKinnon. It turned out to be a very grotesque book; a suspense/thriller/mystery revolving around a mortician that graphically detailed death & it’s ‘after components’. I had no idea, when I read a random chapter, that this book detailed what I have been so carelessly struggling with recently. The last line in the book is merely “I chose to breathe.”

Do I? Do I choose to breathe? Am I tethered to life?

Aimlessly.