I’m sure I’ve said it before, you know – the fact that it isn’t always easy for me to speak freely. Of course, I could always just take a browse through my archives and come up with enough examples that the whole first statement becomes ludicrous in light of said research. I’m sitting outside and it’s a pleasant day. The sort of day that makes you itch to go do something, even if it isn’t something you really enjoy. Already the sun is setting and I can hear our neighbors boats cruising in to dock up for the night. It’s well enough to be boating when it’s sunny, but the wind will nip you until you’ve got too many goosebumps to count when you’re gunning it to get back home.
 
To those who’ve kept up with me these past few months, it’s no secret that I’ve been having a rough time of it. Frankly, I’m having trouble finding a memory to indulge in that’s fresh enough to erase the pain and discomfort that I’ve been subjected too. So all I can do is take the snippets of pleasure I get between doses of foul medication, stomach aches, anxiety attacks and strangle them to get every ounce of relief out. It’s tough feeling sorry for yourself, it isn’t something I’m real good at. I have a habit of gauging myself against the entire suffering world and finding myself with no excuse to be as down as I am. But here I am anyways – and I’m sitting outside on a spiderwebbed reclining chair and listening to the stray dog we’ve adopted rustle through the trees that lead down to the lake. I want to feel miserable and sorry for myself, I want to crawl up into a musty hot attic and sleep until the sour feeling in my stomach goes away.
 
It isn’t easy, because the Lord gifted me with the sort of eyes that never really close. Sure, I can drop my eyelids and hide behind those velvet curtains that throb with thread-thin capillaries. But that never does any good, because I see on right through that. I want to be bitter and resentful, and then comes along the morning sun on a choppy cove like a thousand golden coins. I want to hole up and isolate myself, but the sound of cicadas plays into my bedroom and all I can feel is how great it was to hear them on school mornings when my mom would let me sleep for just ‘five more minutes’. I close my eyes and this beautiful world still shines right in. When He gave me that blessing, when He told me what it was going to be in that dream so many years ago – all I could think about was how useful it was going to be. You know, understanding – seeing inside, breaking down walls and reaching into the very core of people and ideals. I saw a lot of good – a lot. The kind of good that’s supposed to set you for life, make you not want for another thing in this world.
 
It’s not the sweet things I’ve seen in life that follow me to my dreams. It’s not the kind actions of strangers that bubble up to the forefront of my mind when I’m feeling down. It’s hearing that kid scream when fire crawled up his shirt and took to his hair. Knowing that screaming was outta pain, but also begging for help and all he had was me dumbstruck and helpless. It’s the smell of blood – the kind you ain’t ever supposed to smell – oozing, not pouring, but oozing across the concrete without direction because it never was intended to come out of that kid’s gut and into open air. The way I felt frozen and shameful with hot, nervous-wet fingers stumbling up my sunburnt thigh. The way my mind works, you know, is that it won’t comfort itself. It doesn’t seem to have any space, or use, for trying to keep me happy. I suppose it figures that if I don’t take a breath without reminding myself that hell – this could be the last – it just hasn’t done its job. Maybe my noggin is worried that if I’m not on my toes, I’ll really will walk right out in front of a tractor trailer. That if I’m not afraid and worried all the time, I won’t be prepared for the asshole who won’t listen to ‘no’.
 
But what ain’t fair is looking out over the lake, hearing the birds wind down for the night and feeling for just a few seconds an incredible sense of rightness. Knowing that at least a few of those heartbeats were done in a moment of contentment and comfort. It’s too hard to find this peace, to see it in all of it’s glory and then realize you gotta get up and go back inside to play with the deck’o'bullshit cards you got handed. So I take my glasses off and give everything around me unfocused imperfection, because if my blessing is that I’ve always got to see – it doesn’t mean I always have to see it so clearly. I can avoid, just for now, the disarray of my current life in comparison to the beauty outside – because blobs of green and brown just don’t move me. It’s abstract, and I tell you what – I hate abstract art.
 
But when it’s all said and done, and the sun is far enough down that I’m too cold to sit outside and type anymore – I have to put my glasses back on. 
 
Because to do anything I want to in this world, I have to see.