The quiet calm

There is that moment of utter calm and peace you can achieve when you make a decision about your life.  It's the quietness before the storm, it's the utter clarity that you were looking for as you dithered over what to do? what to do? what to do?  It's the immediate relief that a choice has been made, a path laid out and direction to travel in.

That moment of calm overwhelms your senses; your breath deepens, your heart slows, your eyes droop and you long to curl up and relish this feeling of utter contentment yet life yammers in your ear.  The decision may be made but the actions have not yet been taken and lets face it - actions speak louder than thoughts, even shared ones.

And so to action - a plan of attack.  I know the when and the where, a little hazy on the who but I'm sure that will resolve itself.  I want it to be quiet and calm, to cut through the humdrum of the day like a hot knife through butter.  I almost don't want anyone to know so I can just disappear but I know that practicality won't allow that particular drama to unfold.  There are such things as handovers and training and such like.

What comes after the calm?  Well.... either glorious sunshine or tempestuous storms but hopefully nothing as dismal, grey and dreary as the present.  I would rather there be drama and fire and noise than the gloom, doom and indifference I have to currently endure.  The new year is often looked to as a new beginning but I want this one to be a closure, an end to the horrors of the past 5 years.  A definite bang as the door shuts, the books closes and the shutters shut.  I don't want new chapters.  I want a brand new tome.

Hard to say goodbye

There comes a point in everyones life when they realise they have to say goodbye because it is just not going to happen.  I'm talking about that dream of being a superhero, or in my case Lois Lane (from the New Adventures of Superman era).

You just have to face facts.  You have to accept that it's never going to happen.  And it burns.  It breaks you into pieces and threatens to sink your world into deepest darkest despair.  Dreams are for the rich.  Those naturally talented.  They are not for the everyday normal.  And that is perhaps the hardest goodbye to make.  To realise that you are just normal and shooting for the stars is so beyond what is meant for you that you almost feel painfully ashamed in having made the dreams to begin with.

There is a certain quiet satisfaction as you pack up the weight that you have been carrying around with and finally getting rid of the dreams hanging around you.  Gone is the motorbike and finally the motorbike gear.  Dreams of biker chick dissipate into the ether.  Gone is the basketball board and the dream of being like Mike - dreams of playing fled the scene when fingers were dislocated just before Christmas last year but somehow the tangible evidence took longer to gift away.  Now the basketballs really can be used as footballs.  Gone are the little snatches of other lives gleaned from magazines and Internet sites and possibility brochures.  They are all destined for those with more time, more luck and more money.  Gone are the far away dreams of idyllic life - life is not idyllic.

It is hard.  It is rough.  It burns you - it eats you up and spits you out the other side, never caring if you make it whole because it plans to eat you again, over and over and over and over.  Life doesn't care for right or wrong, it makes no distinction on race or gender or age or even the amount of times it has chewed you out.  It keeps cracking you, chipping you, breaking you until you realise the inevitable - there is no escape from the grind.  Join the herds before you, accept the monotony and just sink into the stupor that life wants you to fulfil.  There is no dream - there is no better - there is no light.  There is nothing but the vast emptiness of longing and wishing and hoping.

But wait, what is that inner glow?  That tiny piece of hope that cannot be ripped out of you and trampled.  What is that spark that will always survive?  That is the tiny voice that says - OK, I may not be able to be Lois Lane but I can be the best Jimmy Olsen you've ever seen.