good

I write with the same urgency as if I had escaped some prison and had gotten a hold of a scrap of parchment and pen. In four months, I haven’t been moved to write, though, with the exception of a few months, I wrote at least once a month since I started my blog. I seize this moment now, unsure of when the next time I will feel drawn to write will be. The truth is I’ve been trapped within a dark time in my life. It comes as no surprise after the last few posts in which I become more desperate while searching for answers and more honest in digging through my mind and past. But right now, I have reached a hiatus in the desert that has become my life, and I can write a brief message as myself, or as the person I believe myself to be.

I don’t know when exactly or how I lost my way; though one day I awoke to find all that I drew comfort from to be washed away with the morning tide. I learned the true meaning of building one’s house upon the sand; and where once my warm and familiar home lied, now was nothing but uncertainty and fear, loneliness and disillusionment. I came to believe that all life had to offer was work, anxiety, and rejection all the while I was tasked with avoiding any one of the endless number of ill fates that could befall one through their own fault or the faults of others. I became bitter, and further indignant that life had forced me, once such a bright and cheerful young man, to become bitter. And I have been languishing in these feelings for a couple of years now, using most of my energy to keep me afloat in school, though even in that, no one will ever believe how close I came to failing multiple times.

I was saved. I was saved by an unlikely motley crew of people, some I’ve known for what seems like my whole life, others a couple years, and still others I have only known for a few months. Through my interactions with them, I have been able to begin to piece myself back together. And perhaps they will never know how much of an effect they have had on me at such a crucial time, still even if I expressed my gratitude towards them they would only be uncomfortable. To them they were merely venting, or defending their beliefs to me, or being themselves and weren’t trying to have some sort of profound effect on another human being on some arbitrary night when they were in a bad mood or just felt like talking.

And none of them could have done it alone, but together, the snippets of their stories interconnected with my own mended a series of lessons that seemed so particularly tailored to coerce me out of my depression—to guide me out of my pessimism, gentler at times, more forceful in other instances.

The lessons taught me that the hope, or good that I thought I lost—that I came to believe was never really there to begin with—still existed. They illustrated to me that my perception, heavily influenced by disappointment and fear, showed me a false reality. I became disillusioned because I had a make-believe idea of what the world ought to be like. Once I left the safe womb of college I was put in shock by what I perceived to be reality. At first I couldn’t understand what my problem was, and the descent wasn’t immediate. It was gradual, taking place over a series of months as one after another my expectations were ignored and life continued on, indifferent to how I believed things were to play out in my life after leaving college and entering the pearly gates of law school. Unable to defend myself against a world that I never imagined to be so cruel, and in some places, downright evil, I lost all hope after seeing the true beast. Out of pure terror I rejected the idea that there was any room for good in such a visceral world and turned my attention to the serious business of mourning the loss of any joy or happiness I could have ever hoped for in my life. I also took time to feel sorry for those who seemed to see good in a world where I couldn’t because I knew one day they, like me, would be crushed.  

My rehabilitation came in the form of getting to know a number of new people and others, who had been around, better. In some instances I would be a direct actor in the conflicts and scenes in their lives, in others I was merely a confidant, others still, an advisor. In their stories and the stories that we share I saw good people longing for good. They looked for companionship, they looked for love, they looked for success, they looked for validation, they looked for simple friendship at times, they looked to just be understood by those who didn’t know them that well at other times. They all had their own unique weaknesses and baggage, collected from childhood through their teenage years and college. They all had their strengths, traits that I am in awe of and challenges they overcame that I feel would have crushed me.

I’ve watched them go through good times and bad. And when times get hard, if they look to me for advice or comfort, all of a sudden I can summon words of positivity and hope that I honestly believe. I believe they will get through this or that or find that girl they’ve been looking for or make friends that are trustworthy, get the job, or make their parents proud. All of a sudden, when I see life through their eyes, I can imagine how everything will fall into place and how they will have a happy ending, but when it comes to me… When it comes to me I only see gray and dark skies.

How many amazing people do I have to meet that are doing their best before I believe that good still exists? I watch on as a person who I once knew as a boy, now a man, wrestles with the same disillusionment, while growing deeper in his relationship with a girl he adores. I can see the contrast between the joy that she helps to create in him alongside all others he loves and the fear, frustration, and confusion that the state of the world produces in him. I don’t think he believes that life is as bleak as I would, left to my own devices, but he certainly can see the monsters under my bed. He wouldn’t say it’s “just your imagination” and tell me to “go back to sleep”. Nevertheless he would remind me that this world isn’t entirely made up of villains, idiots, and the apathetic, there are still people who are trying to be something positive, to be something good in the lives of others—and who are longing for something good in their lives—lovers, community, success, friends, contentment, simple understanding.    

The realization doesn’t fix all of my worries and concerns in life, but still it is a sapling rising out of what was once believed to be salted earth. I still have to rebuild my perception of life brick by brick, remaining cautious not to allow some past childhood or adolescent trauma to falsely color it, nor to allow individual and insidious acts of hatred and evil destroy it either. But not too long ago, I thought there would be no good in my new perception. I was wrong. The evidence of good I have missed for so long was always there, though in my disillusionment I became blind to it. And yes, the world is a lot darker than I had imagined it to be—the officials are more corrupt, states war far more easily, the media is far more unreliable and ridiculous, sexism, racism, homophobia, and hatred are far more blatant, prevalent, and institutionalized than I could have ever expected from humans with the ability to empathize and a conscience. And it is truly terrible, but the good that I have seen is enough to make this harsh state of affairs tolerable, at least for as long as it will take me to find more. This rediscovery of goodness is enough to give me hope that in readjusting to reality I will find far more good than I thought could possibly exist when my perception of the world was first shattered.