Sidebar 2: It's Getting Ok Now...

It's been a long while since I took the time for a sidebar. I am well overdue, as I think so much (though thankfully sooo much less than before!) and have all of it just waiting to be put to actual words instead of jumbling about in my head. I don't remember what it is before that I had wanted to write about, but today there are more new thoughts and I want to remember those before they hit the void with all the other lost meanderings of my mind...

I'm almost halfway through the year and feel like while I get closer to knowing more about who I am and how to be happy, I feel as far as if I've started only yesterday!

So I've been reading more often recently. I don't know what brought it on; I just one day felt like reserving books at the library and picking them up once they're ready. Right now, I have a book due back tomorrow, so I'm struggling to finish it. It's the last of four books I borrowed in the past three weeks called "Thanks For the Memories" by Cecilia Ahern.

Those well versed in chick lit would probably know Cecilia Ahern as the woman who wrote P.S. I Love You (which was way better than the movie, which I once took my parents to when it was out in the theater and while it's okay for my mom to sleep through action movies, it's kind of hilariously embarrassing when she and my dad pass out and end up snoring at a really emotional moment...but I digress).

Anyway. It's a funny coincidence that the main character in this book is a woman named Joyce. Who happens to be going through a very hard transition in her life that basically shakes her to her core. So you can imagine how much some of the things that are written on the page have spoken to me as if they were written just for me. They are the things that I've thought about a lot in the past several months, and keep reinforcing that idea in my head that I'm being watched out for... always.

"It was so easy right then to remember only the good times together and to doubt our decision. But more often than not, the easy decisions are the wrong decisions, and sometimes, we feel like we're going backward when we're actually moving forward..."

and then... at the end of that same chapter, she hears a latin phrase:

Perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim, which, I later read, translates to: "Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you."

I wish I had read this book sooner! But I feel like it couldn't come at a better time. As the year goes on, there are days when my initial optimism for 2010 just kind of go out the window and I find life tedious and just keep slogging through the days. It probably doesn't help that I don't get a lot of time to sleep and rest and what not. And with my crankiness and exhaustion, it can be so easy to fall back into that frame of mind that I used to find myself in. It's not nearly as bad as it used to be, but it feels like it's always going to be there... with spurts of acute, intense pain in between the memory of it all... The idea that being stuck in this kind of state is a possibility is enough to make me want to give up altogether!

But the other night, my roommate graduated from law school, and I got to see a lot of the friends that connected us together from our days in high school and college up to now as we ate and toasted (again and again) to Haj and adulthood. Up til all hours of the night and enjoying everyone's company and having the most fun I've had in months and just living in that moment... I was blown away by the paragraph I read just an hour or so ago.

"It occurs to me how happiness and sadness are so closely knitted together. Such a thin line, a threadlike divide. In the midst of emotions, it trembles, blurring the territory of exact opposites. The movement is minute, like the thin string of a spider's web that quivers under a raindrop... I think...how love and war stand upon the very same foundations. How my darkest moments, my most fearful times, when faced, became my bravest. At your weakest, you end up showing more strength; at your lowest you are suddenly lifted higher than you've ever been. They all border one another, these opposites, and s how how quickly we can be altered...A veil hangs between the two opposites, a mere slip of a thing that is too transparent to warn us or comfort us. You hate now, but look through this veil and see the possibility of love; you're sad, but look through to the other side and see happiness. Absolute composure shifting to a complete mess-- it happens so quickly, all in the blink of an eye."

I wondered a lot when I would be okay. After months of wondering, I've seen through the veil and suddenly I am. I don't have to question when. I don't have to worry that it will never happen. Because just like that Joyce figured out in her book, I've figured out in mine that being okay has happened, as if it was all in the blink of an eye.

It may not be that way always. Maybe I won't be okay tomorrow. Or next week or next month. But now I know it's possible. And for this moment, that's enough for me.