The Wisdom of Pigeons

Ever felt alone? I guess thats a silly question, I guess everyone has at one point or another. Ever felt out of sorts in every situation, wanting nothing more than to be understood, only to continuoulsy feel misplaced and outcast? There are few things more horrifying than wanting desperately to find the words to say to be acknowledged and accepted but coming up short, mouth full of silence. It's nightmarish to feel so different, so isolated and forgotten. Unreachable.

It's that sad sorry little thought, "I can't wait for this to be over."

Alone, it comes in waves doesn't it? Sometimes its a relief. Sometimes its the only thing we have that helps us cling to our sanity, other times its the very thing that threatens to undo us.

Last night I dreamed my father was still alive. I ran all the way home to find him leaning against the kitchen counter, just like he would have been if this dream were truth. Arms crossed, easy smile, and forever that silent warm embrace. I burst into hysterical tears of joy. Then I woke up. Sometimes it's not nightmares that are the worst, sometimes, its far worse to be shaken out of an impossible dream born from the burning place in your heart. It's wanting to shut your eyes and crawl back into your own mind, willing yourself to forget that you know it's not real. Sometimes it's the tears you cry from waking up that are the cruelest of all.

I think grief tends to be something that makes the whole world a big empty lonely space. It knocks the wind out of you, leaves you wordless and unable to function normally. It makes you forget who you are without it.

But get this:

So there I was, awake. My dream broken into a thousand shards of reality, and I realized everything was the same. It was 5 am and I was in the state of half-awake, half dream.And all of a sudden my sub-conscious was telling me stories.

There was one about a girl whose eyes didn't match her smile, and no one ever noticed except this boy. She smiled, but her eyes were blank and none of it ever made much sense. Until one day this boy found the shadows that would have surrounded her eyes in a box on her nightstand. She was ashamed of them, she thought they marked her as weak, that people would avoid her if they saw them she she kept them locked in her little box beside her bed. The boy placed each shadow gently on each eye, and her sad little smile made sense. Her eyes were full of sorrow and struggle, but the shadows made them all the more beautiful. They were a testament of her strength not of her weaknesses. They helped people understand her pain, not drive them away.

My mind was really racing, and I don't know if I was awake or asleep or where these stories kept coming from, angels maybe, my restless muse, God, who knows, the next one was this:

There was a pigeon on a ledge, he was nestles in the softest looking nest made of golden curls. He told me how when people die, and come back in their next life, they remember but only when they are very young. Babies remember who they used to be. Have you ever seen that something in a newborn's eyes? It's because babies remember their previous lives, which is why we don't really remember our baby-hood. They forget as they get older, but not everything and not all the time. It makes it easier to let go of their previous life that way, easing into a new life where everyone loves you and everything is okay and you're taken care of. Thats what the pigeon told me anyways.

Then there were the extremes. There were these terribly sad, angry and wounded people, and then there were these happy optimists. The were always fighting each other, and they reminded me of the deck of cards in alice and wonderland that kept getting shuffled and scrambled around, the black cards and the red cards. Then I realized when you put them together you got the "regular" people. Turns out the regular people are just both halves put together. No one is all bad and no one is all good. Humanity, its like a deck of cards. Who knew? My subconsious is pretty great at cheering me up.

Anyways, I had a terrible lonesome day. I felt sad and outcast and surrounded in my grief. I had no words to connect with anyone. I read Bukowski and wrote. And when I think about everything, I mean all of it, in just the past 24 hours, I feel a little better. I still hate winter, and I still miss my dad. Night time is still terrible for me. I still feel unsure of who I am without the terrible parisite called grief leeching off of every other emotion I ever have, but life goes on I guess. And there is more to it than sadness. There is more to it than happiness. It's a one step at a time, day by day thing. People won't always understand, and sometimes, you'll have to rely on your 5 am revelations to make sense of anything at all.

But what I've come to is this: Life is extraordiary...I guess at the end of this long, bad day, thats all I've got. That's my conclusion. And I guess, if that's what I've got at the end of this long, bad day, that ain't half bad.