Two years ago, I got a wish I'd had for nearly a decade. Right here on this very blog, actually, as dusty then as it is now. Perhaps slightly less so, but once you get past a certain point, it's all the same. Anyway, I digress. At that point, I had finally ceased commemorating a certain bygone period on my blog, as it had become a sort of self-flagellation and cryptic reliving of some glory days - which ordinarily I'm all for, but even I have statutes of limitations on that sort of thing, and for once my life had nothing I could really complain about. I was happy in everyday life - not deliriously happy, not perfect in every detail, but happier than I deserved or thought realistically possible. It was one thing when my day to day life was terrible to use sentimental calendar markings to bring myself back to a fond period. Fondness of my everyday life and increasing distance from the people and events being commemorated had dulled my sense of duty and the perceived benefit of publicly wallowing in the observance of significant past events. I privately wallowed, paying tributes and reinforcing stories much like one would with a religion, and even had a steady cultmate. We kept alive a dark art, assuming others had dropped it as much as they had us. And then, for the ten year anniversary, I got something far different and more unexpected than Tin or Aluminum. I got a comment on this blog from someone I was pretty dead certain I'd never hear from again. Several days later, I had my first actual live back-and-forth contact. That happened two years ago today. Over the course of those two years, a great many life-changing things have happened, and while I can't say what the future holds, I have worked hard to return to a point where I am not as in need of my calendar markings to get through the days, nor wallow in the sad ones as much. I have worked to try and enjoy the happiness I still do not deserve, which is harder for me than it sounds. I have a paradoxical sense of debt and guilt for having gotten my wish, but I am aware enough of it to attempt to be grateful for it, and not ruin another gift out of a sense of guilt, as I always seem to do. Because I cannot live an uncomplicated life, being grateful and suppressing guilt seems to be paradoxically not working as well, as it dulls my sense of duty and observance. It feels rather like not visiting a dead relative who gave their last breath to ensure you live a free and happy life. If you're sad and grieving, they died for nothing - if you're out living, you're not showing the proper respect. Which is the appropriate point of data on this curve? I imagine myself today talking to the me of two years ago. Oh, the things I could relate. Regardless of these things, though: good, bad, harrowing, exciting, I'd been granted my wish. What it developed into is a story far too voluminous and emotional to recount here, but for the purposes of this post, it is a day worth marking twice on a calendar, to say the least. A goodbye and a hello, both laden with aftereffects that I will obsessively analyze for the remainder of my self-involved life. So here is a commemoration of that day two years ago, a day with a far-reaching, cataclysmic significance I was ignorant to at the time. I remain ignorant of the ultimate effects this day will have on the tapestry of my life (to steal from Star Trek in the most pretentious way possible,) but I really wish I could talk to a future me and find out. But as the old adage goes, I suppose you must be careful what you wish for. Comments:
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