Journal of Fear and Hope

Previous Journal Entries

Leaving Behind That Empty Feeling Inside
June 9, 2023

It starts with a simple mistake. You coulda done it faster. You coulda done a better job. Maybe you forgot it all together. You apologize, make up for it. Cool, right?

For a while.

But they remember. That mistake—that accident—is what you are. It defines you. Mess up again, and they remind you of the last time, of all the times. You thought it was forgiven, water under the bridge. Nope.

“You did it again. How could you? Why would you? Didn't you even try?” They say that to you a lot. So much you start to hear it even when they're not around. Then you start to say it to yourself.

“What's wrong with me?”

Judgment turns to insult. You doubt yourself. You hate yourself. You isolate, sometimes for years, in the echo chamber of guilt.

In time, you manage to get free. But you've forgotten how to relate to others. There's no happiness in doing what you once loved. You don't know who you are or how to regain your sense of self. But now that you no longer have degradation and blame flung at you daily, you remember how to relax. You begin to heal.

In time, you try to reengage with the world. Slowly. Timidly. One day, you smile, and you don't instinctively try to hide it. You make something, you visit someone, you try something new. It takes effort, but you step out of your hiding place.

It won't be easy, but you won't be alone.

Remember, there was joy. There were friends. There will be again.

The Way the Wind Blows
June 2, 2023

The poet William Stafford used to say, "I never know what I want to write until I've written it." That's a powerful idea to me, because I often have no idea what I'm doing. I just do it. One night I started talking out loud to no one but me, and I fell into a memory. A memory of my friends and me driving without aim or plan out in rural Nash County, among countless tobacco fields, cotton fields, barns consumed by kudzu, abandoned stores, trailer homes, dirt roads, dark and lonesome intersections in the middle of nothing. The furthest we could see into the future was the next CD we would slip into the radio. We couldn't ask for anything else, and we didn't think it would end.

It did.

I wanted to write about that. I wanted to paint that picture of driving through darkness, unaware of the future hurtling at us like a bowling ball, soon to knock us into our separate gutters. The poem I thought I would write would take each of us, one at a time, and contrast the perfection of that moment together in the car with the disappointing destiny up ahead.

I couldn't because I don't know what happened to my friends. I know a little. I know Joe developed the schizophrenia that put his father into a mental facility. I know he used to jump trains, ride boxcars to wherever and call his mom to pick him up. I know Brian lived with his mom for a while, then his dad, then moved into his mom's old trailer when she moved out. He had an accidental kid, married someone else, divorced, worked as a plumber.

All that was years ago. I don't know what those guys are doing now. Is Brian or Joe happy? I can't write about their futures, and I certainly can't pass judgment on their choices. Maybe life is better for them now than back then. I don't think any of us ended up where we hoped to be, but I'm not sure if anyone does.

Anyway, this poem didn't end up like I thought it would. Instead of unspooling the lives of three people, it compresses them into one. But it's got some good passages, and I'm glad to have a new thing completed. I don't know what I'm doing in my life. I'm finding out as I go. But I do know I've always wanted to write. I'm still figuring out how.

--Previous Journal Entries--

"Too many flames with too much to burn, and life's only made of paper" --Ronnie James Dio

"Words are flowing out
Like endless rain into a paper cup
They slither wildly as they slip away
Across the universe" --John Lennon

"Bow to the paper Gods in a world that is paper thin
The fools in town are ruling now" --Duran Duran

"Here I sit writing on the paper
Trying to think of words you can't ignore"
--Alice in Chains

"Working for paper and for iron
Work for the right to keep my tie on
Working for paper and for iron
Work for the unicorn and lion" --XTC