dailenna
Live in the present. Live in the life you have now. Don't look back at the glory days and wonder why you were there. Sure, the temperatures were milder, the colds were fine, the warms were wonderful. Now they're all over the place. Now you huddle in a house where you can see your breath in the morning (why would they ever let a valley get to tree-y and secluded? Don't they know that's crazy for the cold?). But would you give that house up? Would you give away the strides that you've made? Would you give up the life that you've made out of the pile of twigs that was there before?
You were anxious. You were scared and internal. You were so, so isolated. Look at you now. You still don't know what success means, in terms of your life, but you know you're one step closer. You know that you've made such great strides. You are alive. This is good.
It was a simple matter: either Gwendolyn put the rat down, or she submit to its biting, but something in her didn't pay attention. Ever since the pain receptors had been turned off, she didn't see the reason to put up with the effects of the natural world. Why should she succumb to the sun and avoid its burn? Why should she wear shoes, when it didn't hurt to walk across the rocks? It wasn't as though she had ever bled - and now she didn't feel the pressure either. She was never a human, but now even the little things that made her like them were disappearing. There was no reason to maintain the pretense anymore.
Summer's hit again. Well, Spring really, but you know how the temperature starts rising and you start having to wear sunscreen, and no one really bothers with reality, only with what it feels like. When you can't sleep without your ceiling fan spinning, that's when Summer hits, not when the days of the year say it's right. Hot, humid Summer with those storms that break over the course of a few days, then rumble back into hot, cloudless skies. Summer.
I always tried to compete with him at school. We had music class together and it was no competition, really. When it came down to it, he was just plain ol' better. I didn't have the background knowledge or even the innate talent that he did. He used to show off his music to us - "Look, I've been working on this at home," and all of a sudden he'd play some mp3 off free software that sounded like a ten second snatch of the future.
I have all the room to improve now, where he has none. There's no competition to play off anymore, just a straight line as I learn more and catch up to his genius in that slow crawl that will never reach his benchmark. I could be good, but really I will never be the genius he was.
I wanted to be cool, as a kid. I wanted to be that person who everyone recognised and admired, but it wasn't my scene. I was the goofball - the one who mucked around, pretended to be really tough. The one who hit my friends playfully until I found out they hated it, and then I cried. I wasn't cool, I wasn't anything. I was just a mess.
It was ten years since the last time I'd sen him. His face was weathered, wrinkles pulling down at the edges of his eyes, and neck folding like an accordion. He'd aged badly. But still my heart fluttered in relapse of the feelings we'd shared. Looking up at me from his book, he seemed smaller, but his mouth widened into a smile and in my mind his shoulders filled out, and he was the same goofy guy he ever was.
How is it possible to write about grace and the things I have been graced with without mentioning God? I don't think it is!
He has graced me with a life that is free of my fluttering, self-doubt. He has graced me with the chance to love in a way that doesn't ache and hurt and make me long to be loved back. He has graced me with forgiveness.
There is such freedom in His grace.
Sanders looked at his master drearily, pins set between his lips as he tugged at the curtains.
"No, longer. They have to brush the floor."
I could deal with the emotional abuse if you didn't pity me for putting up with it.
If life wasn't so hard, what would it be, really? Would it be something where everyone just chose to make everyone else happy, because that wasn't as hard? or would it be something where everyone pursued their own selfish dreams, because that wasn't that hard either? Or would everyone just stop caring?Do people care to do things because the challenge makes them worth it, or do they care because they have the space to think about other people?
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