Today’s Tomorrow

Sometimes, there is a love that fills you up. Makes you whole, and allows you to be the truest self that you can be. Finding your truest self is hard, keeping it, is harder. A torrent washes over you and your perspective completely changes. Only to have the darker sides of yourself start to settle in again. The notion that you don’t deserve yourself is a difficult notion to dismiss.

Fear of self was what kept him at bay. Knowledge of failings, no longer seen as obstacles, only now seen as insurmountable facts; to be embraced and accepted. The past is a wonderful place to live in. He preferred it there, in there, the loss allowed him to never move forward or look to the future.

Dreams become nightmares, and nightmares become blended into nothingness, and a grey takes over the day to day routine. The small part of him that resists the grey, thought to jump start himself back into a mood once felt. Uses, music, smells, memories, to try to inspire himself into his true self. The good self. A flawed effort, for those are all the past as well. And the darkness and grey continue to consume and thrive.

People are more instinctual than they ever give or get credit for. When one is not ones true self, no matter how well presented that person is, people will instinctively avoid, or distrust that person. So as he continued to search for his former true self, people avoided him. And this allowed once more for the grey, and the darkness, to fill a void, and feast on his soul.

Days become weeks, and weeks into years. And the grey and the darkness become normalcy. Cynicism is lens in which all things are perceived. Anger is left unchecked. Over the slow course of time, without meaning to. He becomes cruel, and cowardly.

The small joys that are taken, that the resistance in him still tries to feed. Become sacred. They are defended and worshipped, the grey and darkness do this to pervert the joys. To keep him isolated and alone. The joys are no longer joys. They are empty solace for a self truly lost.

Then, something new happens. A light shines one day. For no reason. It is not enough to change the grey and the darkness. But it triggers a small hope for the resistance inside himself. A hope for something not thought of in a long time. A hope that disappears in the moment, almost entire squashed by the habitual emptiness of him. The hope though, remains an earworm in his mind. The new hope, is called Maybe.

Maybe tomorrow doesn’t have to be like today, he thinks. Maybe, I don’t need to feel this way forever. Maybe, though I know I don’t deserve it, I can have a good life. Maybe, I need to learn how. And the biggest most powerful Maybe hits him, and forms a change that sets him on a path.

Maybe, I can learn how to try.

So the thoughts remain, and the battle for himself begins. Though tomorrow was like today. And would be for sometime.

Tomorrows are like today, but with each tomorrow, a new anger builds in him. His only tools are fear and anger. Though he rages now. He rages at the feelings of constant regret and shame for himself. He rages at the powerlessness over his melancholy. And not since he was a young man, does he start to truly wish for himself again.

When he was young, he read a book that described the three aspects of love; Brotherly Love, Familial Love, and Romantic Love. As he pondered these, he came to the conclusion that each life has two more loves as well; Love of Self, and Love of Uncontrollable.

Uncontrollable, God, The Universe. Whatever you want to call it. If you can’t love what you can’t control, you will always be lost. And if you are lost, you can’t love yourself. And if you can’t love yourself, your love in the other aspects becomes corrupted. These last two loves are the foundation in which the first three are built upon.

He also concluded that the opposite of Love is Fear. And most, if not all actions were done out of, or in spite of, Fear or Love.

He now saw, in each aspect of all his life, he was never acting out of Love, he was a servant in all of his actions, to Fear.

Now he had two thoughts.

Maybe I can learn to try, maybe I can choose to act.

He couldn’t though. There was a blockade. A loss he carried with him still. A memory. A time. Glorified in his mind that he could never get back to. The last time he truly loved. The time he allowed himself to be truly himself. Only to find he was not enough. And he lost almost everything.

He had loved her in a way he didn’t know possible. It consumed him and each day since she had left, for six years, all thoughts turned to her. He often thought of buying a plane ticket to try to get her back in his life. The memory of her became, what he believed to be his only salvation. He had truly convinced himself that when she had left, she had taken with her, his truest self and that only she would be the one who could return it.

He then saw his inability to go after her, as another proof of fact that he was weak, cowardly and shameful. Though this was not the case. He knew the real reason. If he went to her, the self imposed spell of grey and darkness would have to be acknowledged. For she wasn’t real anymore. She was only a ghost that lived inside him. A secret obsession that allowed him to justify his fears.

A torrent came over him when he recognized this. Though tomorrow remained like today. As it wasn’t just her. His mind was filled with his ghosts of what he felt to be failures and failings. He set on a crusade inside himself to cast them out. To allow these memories to be simply memories, and not the prison that stayed inside himself.

As this continued, the people in his life loved him deeply. They continued to watch and hope for him. Not knowing the extent of what was happening to him, though wondering why he would be angry at random moments. Why, on occasion, he would be tactless or cruel. He tried his best to pass off his cruelty as humour. Those that loved him let him believe it was. It was the only compassionate thing they could do for him.

Then on a warm and sunny Tuesday morning. He made himself laugh. He forgot the joke, but he made himself laugh, truly laugh. He laid in bed, laughing until tears streamed from his cheeks. Eventually he got up and saw his face in the mirror. And remembered that deep down, he liked himself.

The change finally began. Good things take time, great things happen all at once.

This was a great change. The love filled him, making him whole. It became the most selfish and selfless feeling he had ever had. He loved himself so much all he ever wanted to do was give it to as many people who would accept it. A rush of colour exploded in the world. His lens finally shifted into the clear and true world. He would always fear and respect the world, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him from giving himself to it with all his heart.

Anger lifts off of his chest and being. Fear becomes seen and accepted and he allows it to flow through him. Amends are made with the people in his life. They are glad to see him again, some had never seen him truly before, but had faith that he was there. Because people are more instinctual than they are given credit for.

Geared up with no self imposed armour, the memories become memories, he went through them and saw his life for what it was. A simple life, with relatively no harm done. A life that had always been filled with love.

Then he looked to the future, not knowing what would come of anything. But he finally knew one thing. And it would carry on to feed him and fight the grey and darkness that would be inside him for the rest of his life, as it is in all humankind. He knew this;

Today was not like tomorrow. And never would be again.