the hug

there's a moment that happened during that trip last week that i want to capture because it tells all one needs to know about what i have longed for in life and why i am so deeply saddened (dare i say devastated) by the outcome of said trip.

i had the opportunity to visit with the person who would be my oldest friend my first evening there. we were best friends from first through fifth grade (then my family moved away), and after many, many years apart, we were able to reconnect about five years ago.

the "moment" i referred to at the beginning of this entry occurred when we first greeted one another. we hugged, and it was an embrace that was so full of love, knowing, and acceptance on both our parts that it was very much the experience of what has thus far escaped me in my adult life - a sense of belonging, the feeling of home. we gave each other a similar embrace as we departed and his final words were to the effect that if i were able to move there, i would become a part of his family.

you see, even though apart for many years, my friend knows me. he has seen the earliest parts of my life and the struggles that were inherent in my family dynamics and how they affected me. he knows of the challenges i have had in the interim between our loss of contact and our reconnecting. he knows of my current struggles with deep depression, difficult life events and the ability to hold on to some sense of hopefulness. he knows and he cares deeply about me.

from my time with him, i caught a glimpse of what it would be like to have that kind of loving support so immediately accessible to me (we would literally have been within minutes of one another). given that my next oldest and dearest friend would have been just a few hours to the north, it made me start to believe that maybe, just maybe, i could have a foundation from which to build on, finding my way to a greater sense of wholeness and a belief that i have a place in this world.

and so when i got news of the decision, i realized that i would have to let go of that vision; and, as so often happens with me, the feelings that perhaps i am not meant to be happy in this life have overwhelmed me.

it seems such a small thing to ask - to know love, to belong, to be at home within yourself and the world. a small thing? perhaps. but in my case, it seems as if, to have even the small things is too much to ask.

a single hair

in the story of damocles, the protagonist shares with king dionysus how fortunate that dionysus is to be a king of power and riches. when offered the opportunity to switch places with dionysus, damocles jumps at the chance. as the day arrives and damocles is placed upon the throne, he realizes that dionysus has had a sword placed above the throne held aloft only by a single hair from a horse’s tail. after a time under the precarious position of the sword, damocles pleaded with dionysus to return again to his former state in life. the intention of this illustration was to send a message to damocles and to us that positions of power are precarious ones with potential dangers ever present.

the purpose of my sharing this story is to provide an analogy to how i feel about my own overall sense of hopefulness and well-being. they too feel as if they are constantly in a place of ever present peril. one disappointment or hurtful experience too many and it feels that the horse’s hair will snap and whatever remnants of a positive world outlook that i have in me will be irrevocably sundered from my soul just as surely as the plummeting sword would have cleaved damocles’s skull in two.

i received news today about the outcome of the trip that i went on last week. it was not what i had hoped it would be. i look up and i see that the single hair has started to fray.