Stealing Water from the Fountain of Youth

Living alone, you have to fight delusional thinking. Community, other people, do not necessarily provide truth, but they do offer perspective. They remind you to sort through the options, making you less likely to latch onto a single dysfunctional idea and tie your emotions to it.

Solitude, in intervals, does bring clarity and health. But extended solitude is a black hole: the criminal justice system uses solitary confinement as a punishment for a reason.

I cannot compare my time back on the hill as solitary confinement. But as one who speaks as one alone, I maintain that God exiled me here. He is merciful, he is loving, he is kind, he is good. And he exiled me.

If this was even about me. He knew my grandma needed help getting through the first 6 months, and maybe I was just the most available body to do the helping. Maybe. Maybe more, maybe less. Speculation and interpretation. I'm a curious human who likes playing the victim. Indeed, the role of victim is one all 3 selves - the id, ego, and even the moralistic superego - can employ at the same time. It's a huge trap because it feels so good on every level.

The only thing I will ever undeservedly get from God is grace. I am a victim of nothing but steadfast loving kindness. I am extremely blessed to have gotten this time with my grandma. It is an extreme blessing that my reasons for leaving are 1)  her spunk has returned and 2) college calls. They are both such good things.

Seasons change. Just ask the preacher-poet who wrote Ecclesiastes.

On one of the occasions when I verbalized my sadness about leaving her, one of my grandma's responses is that she did not want to steal my youth, that I should go live.

Of course I didn't, but I wanted to say, what youth? My faraway friends and I? sure we dance to loud music, raise our glasses and sing with the radio like we just had our heart broke for the first time, and make funny faces as we take selfies, and bop around town and the world like we are unstoppable—

—But we are only acting. We can't even act alone: we leapfrog each other into euphoria. Happiness and craziness come in gradations as we encourage each other higher, harness the spirit of groupthink.

Our youth was never stolen. Our youth was never ours. We are stealing it, smuggling it across the border, reveling in an ecstasy that we know will never last for more than a few hours or days; weeks if we get very lucky.

It's not that the euphoria is forbidden. It's that to whom much is given, much is expected. There is no time for youth because there is so much to prepare for.

There is no time for youth because we look into each other's tired eyes and see flickering candle flames: we are delicate, mortal (please, be my wind-shield). In the privacy of cars, bedrooms, kitchens, rose gardens, we voice our questions together. We are distraught together. People we love are hurting, the institutions that form society are crumbly, and it breaks our hearts harder than first love gone wrong, deeper. Can we really get through life without making the same mistakes? We have already made some of them.

We break together. We trust God together. We find comfort and, of all things, a little dignity.

Together.

Together.

Together.

Together.

Together.

Together.

I can't speak for them, but it is how I thrive.