This year has been an eventful one for me. I've found myself looking for a future that I could see being bright one day. I think it's getting there. I think I've found my light in the dark. But this does not mean that it's going to be all light. There are a lot of shadows lurking in that darkness. But I can see them frightened back by a dozen points of light. The number of lights is increasing each day. I can see ahead, and that tunnel is very bright. My future, I believe will be bright. And I think that that is the best that I can hope for. To hope for worse would be silly. Prepare for the worse if you must, but never stop hoping for the best.
I can't begin to tell you all what sort of a dark place I was in this time last year. I was broken. I was lost. There was no light in that tunnel. Well, okay, there were three points of light. My kids have always been a source of light. But sometimes we need more than that. And I wasn't getting that in the situation that I was in. I wanted to get light from that darkness, but it was a light that was never coming. I knew that. I had known it for a long time. It's hard hoping for light when you know that it won't come. To pray for even a glimmer of light. And yet there I was, surrounded by darkness.
I found some peace in that darkness. But in it, I also lost who I once was. I lost everything that made me who I was. Although I guess I had started losing that a long time ago. The Rob that once graduated from Elementary School is certainly not the Rob that found Jr. High. Or the Rob that graduated High School. And by the time I got married to the wrong woman, that Rob was dead, and buried in the past. He was nothing more than a dream. And yet I continued to live. I lived my life in a haze. In a nightmare.
Moments of happiness will always come and go. That's always been true. I will not sit here and type out that it was all bad. I think anyone that says that is kidding themselves. I am who I am. I am the sum of those happy memories, and those bleak times. Am I a good man? I don't know. I don't think I'll ever really know that. I try to be. Most times I succeed. Sometimes I do not. I just keep living my life. I keep looking forward. And when I see those lights, those beautiful lights that are beginning to surround me, I can't help but smile.
I have traveled down a road of self-loathing, sadness, and depression. I wanted to die. Things were hard for me. My mind was a ticking time bomb of traps, and unbeatable obstacle courses. But you know something? I found my way through it. I turned the lights on, cleared away the cobwebs of wasted years. And when I finally had some illumination, I found enlightenment. I found all that I had been praying for. I found the child that I once was. And for the first time, I made my peace with him. I let him grow up.
Life is hard. It does not come with a manual. But I think that once we learn that, once we realize that it's okay if we don't get it right on the first try, things get easier. You take it one day at a time, because that's all that any of us can do. You put one foot in front of the other, draw a breath, and keep going. And even if that tunnel never gets any light on its own, I think it's important to find whatever it is that brings light to that tunnel. It's your tunnel. It's your life. And you only get one shot at it. So get busy living, because you're going to spend enough time dead. You may as well make the best of this life, because nobody truly knows what comes next.
To Julia, my light in the tunnel... thank you. I love you so much.
Thanks for reading. And have a fantastic day.
-Rob
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