"Someday I'll fly
Someday I'll soar
Someday I'll be so damn much more
Cause I'm bigger than my body gives me credit for"
[John Mayer, "Bigger Than My Body"]

A couple of days ago I gave a friend the link to my old website. By now, she's pouring over my old archives, learning some the deepest darkest secrets of my mind that I unleashed onto the world about 5 years ago. In response, I did what I always do after I've given a woman a link to either of my sites: I start rereading my own work.
Wondering, aren't you?
I'm not sure why exactly I do that. It's not like I'm going to uncover some horrible thing about myself I'm not already acutely aware of having written. Nor, if I did, would I even remove it anyway. What's there is there, and even the entries I'd love to go back in change in retrospect - which are few and far between, I'm happy to say - I'd never alter, beyond correcting a small typo or such.
It was about "yt". Yesterday I handed her a note (folded into an origami butterfly) asking her out.
To me, that's an important part of maintaining the "integrity of the work". Truth, by its very nature, is temporal. And these pages are snapshots in time. The fact that something changed is to be expected. But what I wrote at the time, that's still pure and genuine.
It said she should drop me a line by Email if she was interested. She didn't Email me last night.
And that temporal nature of truth, the fact that in time, everything is subject to change, is in a large part responsible for our happiness. The knowledge that even when things are dark or muddled, they can change and get better, is what gives us the hope to go on even in times of depression or even just day-to-day drudgery.
But she was working when I dropped by the shop on my way home from work.
I don't know what my future holds. I know where I've been. I know where I am. I know where I'd like to be. And with a lot of effort and a little luck, times will change, the lotus of my soul will continue to unfold, and both within and without, wondrous joy will wait to be discovered.
We had a conversation. It went something like this:
And when I read some of my old work, in spite of the darkness from which much of it sprung, and in spite of my recollection of my mood during those times, I was filled not with despair, but with a sense of hope.
She made eye contact and smiled. I smiled back.
I was reminded of how much I've grown, and of who I've become. I was reminded of how much confidence and strength of character I've gained. I look at how far I've come on this journey I set out on, and I feel proud of myself.
"I didn't get a chance to Email you last night," she said, "but I was planning to Email you tonight."
Yesterday I asked a girl out. Today I got an answer.
"Does the fact that you plan to... mean the answer is 'yes', or... does," I inquired, smirking.
But more important was the answer I found in my own heart last night - that no matter what her reaction, it would not rattle me and set me back. Years ago, as I lurked in the dimest reaches of my own mind, I chose to light a match rather than curse the darkness. I've no desire to return to that dark. And if I must, I will kick until it bleeds daylight.
"Oh, yes," she interrupted, smiling broadly in a most girlish way, "I'll Email you tonight."
(Her answer? The curious amongst you will have to learn to read between the lines.)
"Excellent!" I responded, and smiled boyishly in return.
I don't know what the future holds, except for one thing: hope.