I Can Relate

The following lines are excerpts from last night's One Tree Hill (they're a series of conversations that one of the characters is having with her dead mother . . . I heard her words and completely understood):

I know you're gone and you're not coming back, but I was just thinking that maybe somehow I could see you again or be able to talk to you or hear your voice.

It all just seems so fake. This idea that good things happen to good people and there's magic in the world, and the meek and righteous will inherit it. There's too many good people who suffer for something like that to be true. There are too many prayers that get unanswered. Everyday, we ignore how completely broken this world is. And we tell ourselves it's all gonna be okay, "You're gonna be okay!" But it's not okay, and once you know that, there's no going back. There's no magic in the world. At least not today there isn't.

I was thinking about the finality of it all. How somebody can leave your world in the blink of an eye and be gone forever. It's uh . . . it's too enormous to think about. It's too hard. And then you're just supposed to go on, right? Like just deal with it. I mean really, you're supposed to be sad for about as long as the flowers last. And then, oh, time to go back to telling jokes and reminiscing about the old days. I don't have any jokes to tell. As a matter of fact, I hope I never hear another joke as long as I live. And the old days are just that, they're old days that are gone.

I have to tell myself to just be happy, but I don't feel happy. And when I try to change it, when I try to remember what being happy felt like, I can't. I don't feel joy. I don't feel inspired. I feel numb.

Everyday we ignore how truly broken this world is, and we tell ourselves that it's all going to be okay. But it's not gonna be okay, I know that now.

********

"Our lives are difficult. And our loss unbearable sometimes. So grieve. And struggle. And you find your way back on your own terms and in your own way. But remember this, [our children] would want us to be vibrant and inspiring in the face of losing [them]. They'd want us to fight our pain with all we've got."