"A Need To Feel, A Need To Try"

"She also said, Jump. Seriously. It's okay and it's always worth it, even if you end up crinkled and broken on the ground. Because when it's over, how better then you can hold me when it's my turn to lie, bloody and spent, in your arms. How better then can you sing your children to sleep and wipe away your friends' tears and watch the dawn light sparking through tree branches. Not feeling is enviable only by those who have always felt and felt deeply. "The grass is always greener...." Don't believe it, and don't be afraid. There will be nights when you retreat to your bed, cowardly and shaking to draw about you the comfortless broken pieces of a scattered life and hope. You will tape them together when the alarm sounds in the morning and wear them wearily about you. Most people won't even notice a difference because most people have not learned to see outside themselves. And somehow, that will hurt even more. But every night will not end that way."

I wanted to dig that quote up again. I've always, always advocated jumping; it's how you learn to live, and live well. You see, life isn't about a happy ending. I don't believe in them, actually, and when I'm asked to tell a story, though it might involve a knight and a princess, the happiness in their lives doesn't come from some indistinct, unrealistic bliss-ending that we never really get to see. Happiness comes in fighting off the dragons that come, in fighting them together, and in staying loyal and constant. THAT is living and loving well. Is it not worth a risk then?

What is our fear of pain? I ask myself, What's the worst that can happen? The realistic answer isn't that bad. Pain cuts, and it cuts to the bone sometimes, but you keep going. This phrase, this "you ruined my life"--I don't believe it. As gut-wrenchingly hellish as circumstances can become, they're not irreparable. You don't just cease to exist because someone breaks your heart; no one has that kind of power over you. Not even God Himself can uncreate something.

So then things can always get better. (Just as they can get worse; I haven't forgotten that, but after the worse comes the better.) So what? People might recognize that, but they still back away from jumping. Why is pain so shameful? Raise your hand if you've ever had your heart broken. Go on, raise it. Why hide it? Love turns us all into fools... and I don't see that as a bad thing at ALL. There is nothing more noble or beautiful than giving yourself to someone completely and fully, in holding nothing back to guard yourself against that crash.

The truth is, if it's truly love, you're going to be free-falling and out-of-control. If you had control, you'd be the cold spectator watching someone else plead with you to love him. I've been in control before, watching events transpire. I've actually been in control quite often. Enviable? Not at all. It's about trust, and trusting someone you're unsure of, and giving that person the power to break you into a thousand thousand crystalline shards that some chain-smoking, minimum-wage, unshowered janitor will sweep up into his worn and dirt-streaked dustpan.

Is that not glorious?