The past year

Monday is my day off from the play, so for the past two weeks I’ve been going to see a matinee at the movies. Today I was the only person in the entire theater. I don’t know why but its such a great feeling having a movie all to yourself in such a big place. And the movie was especially good. I’m not sure if anyone else would think it was that great of a movie. The reviews I looked at online weren’t great but they weren’t necessarily bad either. It just really resonated with me. Maybe having the theater to myself had something to do with it. I just saw so much of this past year of my life in it. And the story wasn’t that close to my own, but it felt similar. So as close to home as this movie came, I was still completely able to lose myself in it.

Its hard for me to believe that I’m been back in Arkansas for a year. As fucked up and bad of a year its been, its gone by pretty fast. Well thats not quite fair for me to say; that its been a horrible year. It hasn’t. Well it has and it hasn’t. Its been hardest year of life. I think that’s the best way to describe it. In a period of two months my life changed dramatically. Around this time a year ago I thought my life couldn’t get any worse, and then a month later it did. But somehow I came through it all. And here I am. Slowly stepping out into the world again. And I feel okay. Different. Changed. Not changed for the better or changed for the worse, just changed.

For most of my life I thought that there was some answer out there for me. Some answer that would make me happier. More successful. A better person. I think I’m realizing for the first time in my life that there isn’t an answer. And I’m okay with that. Life’s getting better again. And I’m thankful. And someday the rug will be pulled out from under me just as hard as it did last year. And I’m sure won’t be thankful for that. But I’ll know that the bitterness doesn’t have to last forever.

I’ve had a really hard time every time someone has told be about silver linings, or that there’s a greater good in everything that happens. I just don’t believe that, and even if that kinda thinking made sense to me I would probably still reject it. I don’t believe that everything is chaos and random chance either, I just don’t think that its quite possible to explain or understand it. If I had to sum up what I believe, I would say the the horrible tragic things that happen just make our lives richer. Not better, but fuller. And that there is no answer. Not one that will explain away the bad things and guide us towards that good times. And I can live with that. I can accept that.