Hope in 2017

For nearly ten years, I’ve struggled with the aftermath of Rachael and Japan. For nearly ten years, I’ve struggled to pick up the pieces and move on, putting back together a broken philosophy and a shattered self. For nearly ten years, I’ve looked at every shard from every angle that I could imagine, and tried to find some clue of what it once connected to. For nearly ten years, I’ve tried to find out what went right, what went wrong, what it all meant, and why I was so less. For nearly ten years, each day was spent feeling that I was further and further from understanding that I had been the day before. For nearly ten years, I’ve tried everything, from lying, to running, to denying, to denying meaning, to redefining, to despair, to mockery, to cynicism, and to everything in between, frantically trying to, find some meaning in what I had felt, or, at the very least, to find a way to keep moving. For nearly ten years, the failure mounted until I could not differentiate the failures from myself.

Then, yesterday, something happened.

Thinking about sleep, and the difficulties that I’ve had with it, I started thinking about Rachael again. I started thinking about how my sleep with her was better than any sleep since, and any sleep in the seven years leading up to those happy nights. And I started thinking about depression. And then I started thinking about Depression. And then I realized something critical.

Kat and Courtney have operated under the assumption, for years, that there is something clinically wrong with me. The sleep doctors, whom I saw in ‘07, told me that my sleep problems didn’t match any known physical ailment and were likely psychological. So many people in my life, who know me well, have told me that I almost certainly suffer from Depression. So I looked up the symptoms. 8/9 are certain. 1/9 is probable. And you need five to qualify. Yet, when I looked at those symptoms, all of them, ALL of them, were diminished when I was with Rachael.

And this may be the key that unlocks . . . everything.

I wasn’t a better person with Rachael than I am now. I was a person operating near (but not at) NORMAL capacity. The symptoms of my, presumed, Depression were all lessened noticeably, and the results spoke for themselves. So, let’s assume for a moment that I had/have Depression. What does that mean?

It means that Rachael wasn’t necessarily cosmically special. Nor did she bring out the best in me. It’s that there was something in her which brought out the NORMAL in me. That something about her was sufficient to change my brain chemistry to the point where I was operating at the level where most people operate on a daily basis. My associations of that time, with her, associated the best in me with her, and I thought that it was because of her that I had these things; but, if my hypothesis holds together, then it was not because of her that I had these things, but because of her that I had ACCESS to all of these things. She was the code that opened the door. But what does that mean? It means that there IS a door and there IS a code, and that there IS a way to open it.

So, what does this mean?

It means that I don’t have to look to the past to find meaning and to find greatness. I don’t have to look to the past to find something redeemable within myself. I don’t have to look to the past to find something worth giving air and water to. Instead, I can look at that moment and say, “Ozment, THAT, that was the real you. And he’s waiting, locked behind a door. Just open it up.” There’s a person inside of me who is locked up, and who is buried so deeply I’d forgotten that he was even there. But he’s there. And he’s alive. And when he’s fed, and when he’s given water, and when he’s given air, and when he’s given time to grow strong, then he can flourish again and be not what he was but something much, MUCH, more. He can become something more because I won’t view him as a gift from some manic pixie dream girl. He’s me. And the me that I am now is a phantom shadow of something. Not something dead and gone, not something of the past, but of something very alive, waiting to join with me and to make me complete.

I’m not sold on this yet, not completely. I’m still too scared from the events of a decade ago to believe in anything like I used to. But seeing hope, seeing a chance, seeing a way that life can have meaning, and understanding myself in terms that I can understand, there’s a path forward. Even if it leads to nowhere, it’s a path. I’ve struggled so hard to fight for myself because, for so long, I’ve seen no indication than I was anything more than what I’ve become, believing that when she left, I’d lost the best part of me.

Now?

Maybe, just maybe, I’m worth fighting for.

And where there’s hope, there’s everything.