there is an ancient, nameless guilt  it has pursued me across space and time, and still manages to find me...

i kept hearing the words (or rather the tune) to that song by the weekend...  and it morphed to other songs, like the one from arianna grande...  whoa, i am dating myself, because later when i read this, i will look back with sadness upon what has passed.  what used to be quaint, the background, is now irretrievably gone.

there is a critique from certain people, a judgment.  and the judgment imposes a slick, sheer silver wall that is impossible to climb or influence.  you will NEVER measure up.  in the face of that, i fall apart, i doubt myself.  there are so many things which i neglect, simply by existing, and this makes me feel like that...  then, in my mind, i run through a checklist...  i suppose that my son worries me the most.  but last night, i ran with him, and we sort of had a heart to heart.  he is so open and positive when i speak to him.  i love that within him.  sure, he has worries and anxieties, but he still paints them with such brashness...  in this, he is unlike me, who am simply a mass of worries, a ball on wound up tension.  when he spoke of becoming a teacher, there was a feeling of reassurance within me.

i have wondered, perhaps since the beginning, at the irony...  of how we can be so cruel to ourselves, so judgmental, and yet, extend such warmth and mercy to others.  it's not, and it never has been, about them "measuring up".  i suppose that i have ALWAYS held that misgiving within myself...  but my son proves me wrong: how he unabashedly moves out into the world, mess or no mess, incomplete or no...  he has a bravery that i admire.  and people (including me) seem to like that.  i love that.  why is that?  why is that allowed (thankfully!) but it can never apply to me?

is there someone that acknowledges everything?  i used to think of this as a lover, but there is no lover with the patience and space within their heart to accommodate all the shit that i have to offer.  that's something i realized real quick.  a lover comes to you with their own needs and wants, and it is simply a happy coincidence that those are met, temporarily, and imperfectly, within each other...  and you still have to be strong enough to stand, with all of your own internal contradictions...

i am sad, crying on the inside.  there is no true comfort in this world.  everything passes away.  nothing meets the ideal that you, fleetingly, set for it.  everything falls apart...  in such a world, to stand.  that is the miracle.  in this moment, i love my son, for what he can do.  i will support him, as best as i can.