Thump Thump

Sometimes I wonder what I'm doing wrong. Or, rather, what things I lack the ability to do that would be considered 'right.' It's kind of exhausting.

I know part of it is that I have very little time that is my own. I have to work to make rent. I have to go to school so that I don't have to wash dishes to make rent for the rest of my life. I feel lately that I don't have the ability to accomplish anything; I feel like a failure, a failure at everything. I make everybody wait. I make everybody wait for something, and I can only move so fast. There is pain in knowing that others are waiting for you but you won't be done in a timely enough fashion no matter how fast you move, how hard you force your brain and heart to work.

It's my heart that works the hardest, I know. I apply it like a salve to everyone I love who is hurting, in whatever way or for whatever reason. And I want it to be enough. I want giving my heart away to be enough, but it's not. It doesn't change the past, it doesn't bring about some much needed amnesia, it doesn't make anyone love me more. It doesn't change the landscape, the faces, the leaves on the trees, or how inadequate I still manage to be (for some people at least). But I try so hard. It's not easy forgoing everything you want to do for everything you need to do. It's either disappoint everybody else or disappoint yourself, or both.

My mom always told me that happiness is a choice. But what if the one thing or person you would choose over everything else in the whole world makes it hard to be happy, because it chooses not to be? Can that even be true? That it's a choice? It doesn't make sense. Hunger isn't a choice, pain isn't, pleasure isn't, so why is happiness? It happens to us and not because of us. I want to make it happen for other people, I want to choose happiness for other people, but it's not up to me, and it's not up to them either.

I know for a fact, however, that we do make a choice to dwell on things. We choose to hang on to hope for people and times we know are gone, even when we know it's destructive, to ourselves and those who love us. It brings about unhappiness. We can't choose not to be unhappy, but we can choose not to revel in the things that we know are bringing it about. Part of this is masochistic, part of this is just selfishness in it's basest of forms. We all do it, at some time or another, and really, it's just...it's just plain rude. It's not fair. Sometimes it's just better to be grateful, I am finding out. I need to be grateful that I have a job, a place to live, the opportunity to get a college degree, and for the time (however scant it may be, these days) that I have with James and my family. I can wish for more time, but I'm not going to get it soon, so I should suck it up and get over it. I should just treat what's been given to me like gold, like silver, like dinosaur bones and pressed flowers, and I'm getting better at that.

I just want other people to know how much it means to me, how much it will as time goes on. I want other people to stop dwelling and start looking forward to things.

There are, I promise, some decent things to look forward to.