Life of Dreams

I did not plan to write anything for the month of December, I’ve been adrift the sea of change and opportunity the entirety of this month. I planned to focus on me and what made me happy today, but these words began to pour out and I think it is worth a post. I think it is a necessary step for me to stop hiding the choices of my past— waiting for the right opportunity to use my story and just be out there with my story. Everything I am now and will be is because of everything I once was.

Life is perspective. Those three words are the foundation of my entire worldview. Perspective is what brought me to pour pain medication down my throat in excessive amounts hoping it would be the final solution to all my problems—problems that were inherently mine of the making. Perspective steeled my will as a Raleigh police officer stood at the entrance to my hospital room to tell me I had been involuntary committed—I was too depressed and scared to even know what he was saying, but I had already determined that I wanted to live and needed to find my reason. And as I think back on the darkest four days of my life and the conversations that were had within those days, it has always been maddeningly obvious that all I needed in that time was someone to lend me their strength of conviction for life. I did not need a 72-hour hold. I did not need the officers attempt at empathy as she cuffed me and placed me in the back of the patrol car to be escorted to the mental health hospital. I needed someone to show me there was a different path in a different way and that I could choose to walk that path. But there was no-one like that for me: everyone was concerned that I would be successful and decrease the population by one more person. They were concerned about how my loss would affect them not about how life had been affecting me.

“How life had been affecting me.” What a statement. How often do we pause to think about the person who is less fortunate than we are and imagine what life might be like through their eyes? I’ll answer that now, not often enough. I’ll be honest with you, dear reader, this was never difficult for me. Somewhere in my childhood the door to my empathy was ripped wide open and I lost all objective control over understanding the pain and suffering of those around me. At times it is so strong that I crawl into my bed at night numb to all around: I wasn’t aware of this until recently so I cannot tell you how many times others plight in life took precedence over mine, but I can tell you it was enough for me to lose connection to myself and view death as more productive than life.

For me the lesson was that feeling was not an apex of life—I don’t know what the apex of life is, and frankly I don’t give a damn. Humans are relation beings we will always seek relationship and be drawn towards family dynamics. But when our view becomes narrowed, and we attach the positive output of our feelings to people we lose sight of the most basic and fundamental human abilities: choice. I can now be alone —even with tears falling from my eyes throughout the day. I can feel sadness and it does not turn to madness. I can stand the wait for the right people in my life who elevate me and support me. I did not come to this point at random, I chose to be here like I chose to drink water from a cup. Companionship is a range of human experiences like creating art or playing sports, or conversation with a friend in a coffee shop. A range like spending the holidays alone or with family or going on vacation. A range like working to afford the dreams and hopes of your inner voice. A range of feelings and emotions. And if your perspective narrows and you lose sight of parts of this or even the whole life becomes less desirable until you are faced with a choice: why am I alive?

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”  —Viktor Frankl

There is much we don’t choose in life, I’m sure you can think of a list just as well as I can. In any moment and any time, we choose our own path in life. We make our way. And then we live with the consequences – good or bad-- of those choices. Which is why I write, the path I chose is to create opportunities for dreams. Because, for me, my dreams are what makes life alive.  And if I can extend that gift to even one person my purpose is fulfilled.

LIFE OF DREAMS

I live a life of dreams,

Buildings reach high into the sky.

Things they see as impossible, I see as possible.

I walk these streets alone—

A phantom in a world of dreams

One day, they’ll be possible.

— EJB