Word Count = 516
Estimated Reading Time = 2 minutes 35 seconds
I keep coming back to this poem I wrote about 2 years ago and I think I now understand why. Allow me to expound.
Starting over is something I’ve done a couple of times before and each and every time I do so with a renewed perspective and drive. I think it’s a universal rule that it’s impossible to see the end from the start. The good thing though is that in spite of this, it’s such an ethereal experience to look back at the beginning once you get to the end.
This is even more true if the end didn’t quite turn out the way you expected it would. Looking back at the hopeful beginning you had from the crappy end you’ve ended up in has the undeniable effect of making you want to be, if nothing else, as hopeful as you were in the beginning.
At the beginning of last year, I was single, had been home for over four years, and was jobless. Yeah, it was pretty sucky. The funny thing though is that even when COVID-19 hit, things didn’t get worse for me, they actually got better.
I got a captioning job, moved into my own house, and even planned out my NANOWRIMO manuscript down to the nitty-gritty. I was on a roll. If only that roll pulled through right to the end of the year.
No sooner had I gotten my new well-paying gig than I lost my job, my entire family got sick and towards the end of November, my dad died.
I was devastated. Why? Just when things were getting good they got unbelievably bad.
So like so many times before, the poem flashed before my eyes like a naysaying doomsday preacher. It’s like the 25-year-old me knew exactly where I’d be two years down the lane and he did the needful.
He sent me a letter of hope, in his cheer, stripped of grief, of fear, of dread. Back when things were bright, when I was expectant about getting a job, moving out, finishing a manuscript. He hoped then and in his hope curated the perfect dose for my dreadful end years to come.
Well end is the wrong word… let’s just call it a new beginning.
Truth is, what is to come is always unclear and veiled in so much mystery. It may be good, it may be bad. Whatever the case though, the good thing about beginnings is they set the pace for us. They remind us that even though we fall, we can get up.
So that is what this is… my beginning, figuratively and practically and surprisingly, in spite of what happened, a joyful one. So in spite of whatever dark days may lie ahead of me, I will always look back at this day like so many other bright beginnings before it with pride, nostalgia, and no little measure of jealousy.
Then fasten cheery heart filled with mirth and glad and hasten to that land of bliss once more…
.
With Love,