Faithless and scratching for a fingerhold

(Written while at work on 1/19/09)

I have lost my faith, my faith in mankind and my faith in god. I look around nowadays and it is so hard to see the good in the human race. I start to wonder just how corrupt we have become. We have become everything that we should be striving to rise above. We take away from our kids to make more money. We overprice things to make more money. We ignore our own needs for the needs of our desires. We cast aside morals for those desires.

Why?

Because we are starting to understand that there is no god, or at least forgetting that there is something beyond this life. I realized this one Monday morning when I was looking around while going to work. I wonder if I am loosing my humanity and slowly fading into this thing that just goes to work, comes home to sleep only to start all over again, a robot if you will. I have realized that I am not as artistic anymore. I can’t write like I used to. I can’t draw like I used to. I can almost feel my imagination and creativity fade into nothing. There was a time when I used to covet a religion of nature and rebirth. Now, I have a hard time even entertaining the idea. I am just not as spiritual as I used to be and I wonder if it is because when I look around, all I see are people, building, cars and concrete all neatly decorated with plants planted by man. There is nothing natural where I live anymore. Its all man made, hard and gray. The bright colors have all faded. The pretty birds have flown to cleaner places. There are nothing more than rats, possum, crows and buzzards. There is no god in Southern California. L.A. has chased the gods away so that it can now bow to a rectangle green piece of paper.
It’s sad really. There was a time when I would look around and I would see a higher power at work. I would understand that no matter what happened, I would be ok, we would be ok. Now, it’s hard to see. I really have to look. When I look, I find my strength in the White Raven. She is someone I can lean on even if I try to show her that I stronger than that. The fact is … if there ever was a time that I needed her, its now. It has been for a long time. I have become so befuddled inside that its has become hard to focus. But I know that if I let it show… she will see that I am far weaker than I have tried to perceive myself to out to be.

"Are you depressed?"
"I don’t think I am..."

Am I? How would I know? How can I compare my thoughts to the thoughts I can not hear from inside the head of someone else. I don’t feel like I am. Life is not that bad. It’s not that hard on us, at least not any harder than I am making it. We can make it. We will. We will because we want to. That’s what I keep telling myself. It’s what I keep telling her. It’s the truth. I know she worries. I know where those worries come from but that’s a choice I just can’t see myself making. She is a strong woman. It makes me jealous sometimes. She has suffered more than I have and seems to have a stable foundation she lives her life on. I hope I have a stable foundation but I am afraid that I don’t. I can’t fly anymore. There is no room. This concrete cage of smog, stone, noise and clutter has boxed us in. I am scraping the bottom, searching for what little strength is left, what little defiance. I want to roar against those walls but I am finding I have no more voice. I pound against those walls only to tear and scrape at my own hands. I tasted freedom once… it was sweet. Now it is just a memory.
It’s a memory I hold on to and hope that we can one day return to. It was a place that we found a sense of peace in our erratic lives. It is these two things that I have found some sort of lasting strength in. It’s the White Raven and this one simple hope for freedom that seems to hold me up against all that tries to crush me. I have been slipping lately. I know it and it makes me tired to know it. It had never occurred to me that the White Ravens irritation was a crutch against that failure. Her frustration in me is something that weighs heavy on my heart. I see it in her eyes and her frown when she stares at me. Seeing that makes me force myself to get a better grip and try to take control of my failures and cast them aside. I am weak but not without my strengths. It’s just that those strengths are not truly my own. But does she know this. My heart screams to me the desire that she does not but whispers a slight sigh of relief that she just might know.
In the end, it mattes little if she knows or not. It only matters that I ... we ... get through this. It only matters if we escape this trap that is squeezing the life out of us and into a world that is far more open and colorful than the one that surrounds us now. A world that is still full of life, a world that praises that showers that fall from the heavens, and a world that desires to be explored and prays for adventure.