Time to Dream Another Dream

If I wanted to ostracize everyone that has ever been any semblance of close to me, I would maintain an attitude of extreme positivity or extreme negativity. Considering the former, do you know what the true power of positivity is? Being mad annoying to the people you around you. You know these people! Something goes wrong, even significantly, horribly wrong and they have the nerve to say, “look on the bright side”. I can’t look on the bright side, Maddy; my house is flooded. But also considering the latter, it is EXHAUSTING to be around someone who is Maddy’s antithesis. You also know these people. The house is flooded, and Sydney is calling in the priest to give her last rites because you know, she’s obviously going to die or something because life is ALWAYS taking a fat dump on her. Admittedly, I have been BOTH Maddy and Sydney and I have known them. Being positive takes a lot of work and so does being negative. While I try to be as balanced as possible, you won’t see me tight roping over Niagara anytime soon. Life can be really damn hard, and it has been for me, especially lately. And yeah, I guess I could change my perspective, but let’s just peer our eyes into my 2019 real quick: Living in Los Angeles, working my dream career, dating my dream man. There were struggles, no doubt – living with three roommates and paying out the ass for a room is no walk in the park, but I was happy. 2020 took a fat dump on ME and my life has been Will Smith flipped-turned-upside-down since. Not to kink shame life, but what the hell happened? Dreams are important. It seems mine only exist in the hours between sleep and awake anymore. I once had a sheet of paper with all of them written down; my goals, my dreams, my aspirations. “Buy a house in Los Feliz in 2020”, “get married by 2020”, etc. Looking back, it makes me laugh. Who the hell did I think I was? Buy a house in Los Feliz? As if I’m Dakota Johnson or something? Get married? To whom and why? It all seems like it was once within reach and I got knocked off my trajectory, my potential energy being spent on trying to make ends meet and lamenting was and no longer is. I feel like Tootles, the lost boy. I swear to God I had marbles once, somewhere in some dreamland, beyond the second star to the right and straight on ‘til morning – they existed, I promise. Well, I guess it’s time to dream another dream, right? To get back on that trajectory and meet whatever girl went on without me. Or drop the bitch altogether. I wish I could muster up the strength to “pull up the bootstraps” and get on with it. I wish I could say I have the gall or courage I had when I was 22 or 26, but it seldom shows its face in the same way. Do you ever get frustrated with yourself? With all your starts and stops? You tell yourself you’ve been here before; you know you’ve been here before, but it doesn’t matter, right? Sometimes I wish there was someone out there to tell me exactly what to do. I feel like I can no longer be all the people I wanted to be and then I’m left with the existential question of, “well, then who the hell am I?” And I get frustrated. What are my goals? Where do I want to go? More importantly than that, where do I want to stay? As it appears, I’m at a standstill, caught between those forks I have paused my step at time and time again.

There is hope in that, however daunting and intimidating. The only way from here is forward. And forward, I will go.