Tuesday Is For Jazz Lovers

 there are versions of the truth that most people will avoid in order to save face. we all tell tall tales and little white lies that overshadow our inability to reconcile with our emotional ineptitude. rather than hand out a compliment, we hand out sass or negativity. instead of holding someone up to the light, we shoot flaming arrows of disdain to set each other on fire. it truly is a mad, mad, mad world that only appears to be getting worse and worse and the years go by.

with little confidence, i approach getting older unlike i thought i would when i was younger. a fine timeline of things and accomplishments to have completed before the final thread of life has been cut. twenty years ago looked a lot different to me than fast forward twenty years. back then i could see myself starting a family and having doing good things. i wanted to marry the man of my dreams in a small intimate ceremony. we would adopt two kids who had been waiting for their forever parents to find them. we would all get a puppy/older dog (from the shelter of course) as a chritmas present. and we would document our lives as a presentable, wholesome, american family. living the dream.

dreams have a price though. and i have heard a lot of folks say that you have to work hard if you want your dreams to come true. i agree and disagree on both accounts. i could work as hard as i have for 100 years and still not see a light at the end of the tunnel for my dreams. whether i surround myself with people who believe in the things that i beleive in or not, well, still only gives me an insight into others who rarely take the same initiative in me. at the end of the day, when messenger goes silent, when there are no more emails or direct messages to my phone, and all daily interactions have come to an end, all i am left with is my own thoughts. 

many times a day i ask myself "what is it all worth?" i fantasize about a different life altogether and wonder what choices i could have made differently to enact an opposite result. what-if'isms are tricky little monsters and deep rabbit holes to get lost in. far too often i am stuck waist deep in an upside down what-if'ism that doesn't make sense and only serves to feed the demons in my head. could i be my own worst enemy? yes. could i be something special to someone else? not if i can't reconcile how i feel about myself. is the reality that i see the same as the reality others see in me? who knows. we all wear masks and present ourselves differently to one another.

i could be wrong though. at 45 i don't see things improving much. if anything, i kind of see them getting worse until that inevitable day when someone has to tag my toe for identification. the dark side of my personality wants the mourning to be seemless and slight. i don't invite onlookers and well wishers to cry over the loss of memories and dreams we never shared. i also don't desire the complication of burial and final wishes since the only purpose they serve relies on the living. it is a dark turn, i know, but the thought of being remembered as anything other than what i have always been thought of is astounding and ridiculous. and for this hypocrisy i will not cater. it seems all nice and friendly, but finality is what it is. final. each day that passes afterwards is moot.

i don't intend to take a turn down a path that i seem to wander down from time to time. it is depressing and unpopular. it doesn't help me achieve the things that i want to achieve, but it is a road that i find myself walking down more often as i get older. it's a road i try to change. many, many times i have tried to change the road i am on. i find different trappings and new avenues that benefit me for a short time. when everything expires, it disappears as if it never existed. finding it again is challenging and then struggle to keep it with the same intensity as i had. each different form of the original takes pieces of me and buries it in a point in time that doesn't take root. there are no seeds to my being and nothing to harvest, regardless of how i have grown. 

will i ever find happiness? truth is, i am not sure that it really exists. for me to give it a name or a face or form that resembles whatever it is that i see in my heart and soul only tortuures me. they say that happiness is what you make of it. happiness comes when you least expect it. happiness is in the smile of a child. and that is all well and good, but i have forgotten how happiness made me feel. how fleeting it was to enrich me and give me a sense of purpose. it was a moment in time that led me down a road that balanced disappointments with accomplishments. for as long as i had happiness, i was convinced that i deserved it and my reward, as a faithful being, was calm. even with a storm, i was calm. against the odds, i was calm. without my love, calm. i have tried to forgive my happiness for betraying me. for showing me things that rose colored glasses amplify. i have tried. and as much as i have tried, i have failed to concede that in life happiness comes and goes. i am left seeing things differently because the happiness that i knew was only an illusion.