Pretty Things

Someone told me how to live my life without saying a single meaningful word.  I learned by example and, though it took years, I picked up on all the subtle nuances of a lifestyle of simple decadence.  Oxymoron to some, but everything to me.  When I need to feel better I act silly, the more absurd the better, and it helps.  When I need to feel a connection I have that person on hand at almost any time.  Though it hurts inside to be cut off from what most consider normal, I keep on going, because it isn't the job that makes the man, nor the social circle.  I keep going because at any time I can escape within a world of endless adventure, and its because of her.

It seems simple enough that when she hurts, that I follow suite.

I look at this person, this icon of my very well-being, and when she is laid low by the tragedies of life, I do my best to help her.  I give her the advice I'd like to hear, because our situations are oddly mirrored.  And when it doesn't seem to help I question the validity of my life, but only briefly.

It took ten years to be my own man.  I let myself be guided by family and friends and loved ones and gurus and psychologists and none of them could put it as simply as she did.  But I am myself now.  Ten years to be born, and now the roles seem reversed.  I am trying to be there for a person who I thought had all the answers, a voice of reason that never faltered, and never let me down.  And it makes sense that things should come like this, full circle, when I am finally and fully self-actualized.  I have an identity, a purpose, a reason to wake up even if its just to spite those who said I couldn't.  Each day is a struggle, but that's life, and my life has its rewards.  I don't have to drudge away working jobs I despise or pretending to like people who aren't worthy of my love.  I am free in that way.

Simple pleasures, silly diatribes, names for every occasion.  I thought it was the heroes of books and film that led me to myself, but it wasn't.  In the end it was me, mirrored in everyone I sought guidance from.  I am my own savior, my own father, my own brother and friend.

One day it will all be better, and if its not I'll keep trying, because sometimes life is pretty, and that makes it worth it.