slip your heart into my chest

i will never lie when i write on this thing
i can't. not when writing is an extension of emotion, experience, whatever.
maybe i'll be wrong, and maybe i'll be delusional, and i might even omit, but i won't lie.
so i won't say the past couple of days have been rough, not because its a lie, but because its not enough.
a couple of people have asked me - how you doing - and i try to be as honest as possible.
sometimes i'm ok, sometimes its as if nothing is happening and i can laugh and have a good time and do my work without interruption and i can concentrate and i can think positively and be really hopeful and optimistic.
sometimes i'm numb, 'stay awake in the night, just staring at the ceiling above' - no thoughts, nothing. just there. on pause.
sometimes it crashes down on me, and it feels like i'm suffocating. someone is sitting on my chest, someone has punched me in the gut. and it will come at random times, a song will set me off, the night, a word.
and none of this is surprising, or it shouldn't be. it seems adequate and reasonable. it seems like the standard response. we're all raw right now, we're all selfish because we need to learn how to process our emotions.
so ive been keeping a journal, external to the blog, and i've set my self up to go to counseling and a support group - my mum told me before i left to vindicate my emotions, and i intend to do that.
if im going to be strong i'm going to need to learn how to process these reactions, how to understand how there can be darkness and light, how to find hope when you feel like you've just lost it. and i need to be strong, stronger than that, so i can lend some of my strength of my mom when she needs it, to my sisters and brother when they need it, to my dad, to my aunt and uncle, to my cousins. and im not setting myself up to be some kind of hero or champion, because hopefully they can lend some to me too.

and hope, that word...for so long it seemed to arbitrary to me. like something you wrote really large on a piece of construction paper in grade 3 and decorated with sparkles. it wasn't as if i've never understood it, it just felt whimsical. but now it carries so much.
because to have hope, and loose it... the feeling of disappointment reveals all that you had with it. And to find it again, despite the circumstances, despite the anger and the pity, despite the difficulty, reveals how much you gain with it.

How to explain this...

I was walking to work yesterday. And it was almost as if, my life was on repeat, just a little distorted.

I was upset, to say the least, and making my way up the path to the back of the office.
And it had been raining in Geneva the past couple days, but today it was bright and sunny. Not too sunny, not too bright. It was a calm light. And the air was crisp. And everything was green and yellow and orange. And I thought of how much this reminded me of that one sunday in October, when the moment was just right and a butterfly was by my ankle, and how perfect everything had been then. And when I looked to my feet, I saw a fat pug. You know one of those dogs whose fat rolls on its back like the fat rolls on Timbalands neck? Anyways, I found it funny, so odd and misplaced so ridiculous, and yet really really suiting. And again, there was that moment, where it all made sense even without thinking about it or having the answers or knowing the question.

And I guess that is where I'm going to find my hope. In the moments of clarity, in the moments when everything seems so much bigger than me, when words and emotions aren't arbitrary or trivial or whimsical - but when they are tangible, at your feet. I'll take it as it comes. and nobody said it was easy, and nobody said it was going to be. but I believe in fighting, i believe in finding strength, i believe in finding hope.