A change that stays the same.

Every day, you’re never quite the same.

You wake, your eyes flash-focusing in light of the sudden lights, trying as hard as they can to find a solitary thing to concentrate on. They always do. And hurrah, hurrah, you’re once again a part of the world. Congratulations. Every day.

Yet it does something. Those moments where your mind and body are out of touch, whether you’re asleep or not, whether you’re truly awake or not; the moments in your life, big and small, no matter where they find you, or what they are, they amount to something.

You wake up, and you find yourself different. Even if you don’t realize it. Even if it’s for the better. Even if it’s for the worse. It happens. And the fact of the matter is, there’s not a thing that you could ever do about it.

Of course, once you realize the change is happened, once it finally snaps into place with a tremendous metaphysical click, that’s where the problems come from. Because sometimes, you can look at yourself, look in the mirror with a smile on your face. Happier and older and wiser. Better? Different. Sometimes, these things work for us.

Sometimes, we don’t like where we’ve gone. Even when we do.

Am I making sense? Is this a sensible issue to begin with? Or is this one of those things that are beyond our understanding, the things that exist within ourselves every day, always working, always confusing, always making us live. Not physically, but emotionally. Working our hearts and head to the bone until the day that the pair of them peter out, letting passionless lumps of cold sit there until we decompose into the Earth. Can we work this? Can we think this? Can we comprehend this?

Let’s try. Come on.

I have to tread lightly on this. It’s in my heart and in my head not because of how I’ve been affected, but because instead of how it’s working on someone who is dear to me, almost devastatingly so. The pair of us haven’t spoken much as of late, our words drifting away from me in a manner that saddens me deeply. But I cannot stop caring and worrying and trying to help. So to this person, if you read this…I apologize for thinking out loud. I’ll take it down, if you ask me to. Until then…

People are complicated.

You see it every day, you know it to be true. You watch people cry over things that seem tiny, you hear them dismiss that which you feel should be huge. You look at people trip, and sometimes you might do something, and sometimes you might not. You know what it brings, either way, whichever choice you make, whatever you do. You might not know the reason. But you have one. Always.

Way of the world. Right?

I’ve said that, on occasion. On many occasions. When talking about different things. But for the most part, I’ve said it when speaking on the subject of people. Because of our complicated simplicity, because of our maddening human nature locked deep in the synapses and receptors of our monkey brains, sometimes it seems like the only thing that makes sense. Broad enough to be logical…yet people know what you mean.

I think. I hope.

I said this to someone recently.
Someone wonderful, who had been telling me that they are a horrible person. And in my stupid monkey brain way, I got a little bit angry. Angry because this person is intelligent and exuberant, lovely and interesting, kind and thoughtful. I cannot handle such a thing coming from one of the best people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.

It’s a situation. A situation that happens sometimes, to everyone and anyone, a bit of unforeseen change that is unexpected yet not quite unwelcome. A situation that causes good people to think they’re bad, so much so that you wish you had permission to come closer and softly whisper the phrase, “Sono Nukumori ni you ga aru,” into their ear, simply because you’re too much of a coward to say words they’ll actually understand.

But what I can say, what I’ve seen in the past, what I’ve thought my way through in the wake of a truly despicable series of events, was this:

Impossible situations don’t make people horrible.

I can remember, once upon a time, talking to someone after the fact about the aforementioned despicable series of events. The person wanted my forgiveness, something which I was perfectly willing to give. This person in question had indeed done horrible things. There was violence in him, violence put in there by almost two decades of being submerged in hatred and regret, violence that he could have cast aside, but he dealt with through vengeance.

But despite all this…he wasn’t a bad man. I’d seen him laugh, I’d seen him cry, and I knew damn well what kind of person he was.

You’re not a bad man. But you have to decide if you can be a good one.

People should never just forget it, and should never just act like nothing is wrong, as if nothing were ever wrong. But that doesn't stop living. And it never should, because our lives, our wonders, our experiences, and our sorrows should never be cast aside. Our feelings might alter us, but they don’t always define us. We define ourselves by how we react to them, and how we live through them and around them. The feelings themselves are nothing to be ashamed of.

Even it’s a case of a right love, at the wrong time.

Sometimes, sometimes, sometimes, just feeling how you feel isn’t enough. Life isn’t a grand story, where everything works our for everyone, where the people who should be hurt instead nod sagely with a look in their eye that says the understand. Not life. Life isn’t easy, life isn’t neat, life isn’t tidy. It’s what we have. And sometimes, the best we can do is live with it.

Yes, I believe in romance. Yes, I believe in pure, beautiful love. I believe in deep connections, and soulful looks into other peoples eyes. But that doesn’t mean that I believe it conquers all. Even if you want it to, while at the same time not wanting it to. Yes, people are complicated.

I can remember speaking to someone about this, the first member of my holy trinity of lost confidants. They all left me behind, for whatever reason, some which I know, some which I understand, and some which I tear myself apart trying to puzzle out. But still, every so often, we still get a chance to talk. And as always, with these people that I miss speaking to as much as I miss anything, it’s wonderful.

This particular time, I was speaking about a similar situation to the one that is going on today. Her particular take was that if it’s really honest and true, romantic love, that you would be unable to stop yourself. Regardless of people who it would affect, regardless of anything else but your own feelings.

Ironic, really. Because this is the person who I once had a three hour conversation about the nature of love with, as she was convinced (at the time) that it didn’t exist. Eventually, she would meet a guy who she was attracted to initially because she said he reminded her of me. True story. I want to be happy for her, I really do. But it doesn’t make me feel right inside. And because of that, I cannot help but feel guilty.

Guilt is something brought on by ourselves, a buffer for the sake of our morality.

It hurts. It always does. And sometimes it’s unwarranted, sometimes it’s just another layer of psychosis, something that happens to neurotic people who cannot seem to help such things. Yet other times, the times that we look at right here right now, it’s essentially to keeping the world together. Everyone hurts. Everyone falls in love. Everyone gets torn apart, everyone, even the coldest of us, gets to a point where they feel as if they’ll go entirely out of control, and they want to, even if it’s madness, even if it’s wrong, often BECAUSE it is.

Yet all we can do is live. Live with our changes, live with our choices, live through the life that we can understand will always be bittersweet. Even if you know someone looks at you, and it makes you smile, even though it can never be. Or when someone else looks at you, without you bothering to notice, and the looker never says a word, because they know the way things are.

Way of the world.
Right?

It happens to everyone, and it's terrible, and wonderful, and so many things, so much so that reasoning it out as anything other than pure life will just destroy your head.

La dolche vita.

There’s nothing I can say. Things change, people change, perceptions change, the world moves on. And honestly, most things say the same. Sometimes it's subtle, sometimes it's not. Nothing I can do, nothing I can think to quicken the pace of my friends feelings, my friend who will always be amazing no matter how horrible she thinks she is. I wish I could be able to make her see it. I wish, I wish, I wish. Yet I cannot help. But I truly wish I could.

Perhaps, today, that can be enough.