Always Two Sides...at the Least

Folks often tell me of late that I do not show signs of the man
they once know. These are well intentioned people who have
known me for decades, if not my entire life. There are fewer
and fewer of these particular kinds of friends and family around.

What they tend to actually say is something seemingly innocent
like "Where's that easy smile you used to sport?" or "You seem
so serious and dark...Lighten up!" and the message is clear.
They genuinely do have interest in my well being. They do perhaps
fear I have been swallowed by a new and less affable design which
threatens to engulf the old me.

Like grandparents bemoaning the loss of sweet little babies to
young hellions, and then again sweet young hellions' loss to abrupt
teenagers, and so on, it is the loss of innocence that we all seem
to miss. Perhaps because witnessing such transformations remind
us of the often dire and unrelenting nature of this world.

I sometimes grieve myself for the loss of  my innocence and naivete.

I sometimes sit in bed, unable to reach sleep while perplexed by
the burrowing questions, and I ache for simpler times.

I debate with my eldest friend the great hypothetical of whether
we would prefer to be ignorant and blissful, or if we are better
off for the supposed knowledge we command.

I try hard to recall the perfect, primal essence of true love, as
experienced oh so long ago for the very first time. For the years
have jaded me and sometimes I imagine I will never be able to
look past the reality of people (or the armored veil of my distrust)
in order to experience such unbounded--and unfounded--joy
and freedom in this lifetime.

So I allow my friends the openness to grieve my 'Little Boy Lost,'
for I know it is not a personal attack of what I have become.
Of what I had to become, in order to survive.

They are grieving their last vestiges of hoping someone could
maintain doe-eyed optimism. They are grieving their own simpler,
easier times, too. I know their sadness comes from a place of
having wanted more for me than this thing they wished would not
come. It is also quite likely a bittersweet acknowledgement of
the passage of time, and one of those disturbingly recurrent
reminders of our own mortality.

They say I don't smile as much as I used to, and I cannot deny
it is true.  My innocence is gone. But not my contentment, and
not my capacity to dream. Certainly not my compassion or my
wit or my humor.

I had to grow up, at least somewhat. Take a reality check,
assessing what was and was not realistic any longer. It was, to
put it deceptively mildly, a painful process. But I am not just
wounded...I'm grateful. I'm better.

For friends, who see only periodic splotches of the changes in
my darkened gaze and my strident poses, it is of course more
jarring. The change did not have the good taste to be witnessed
in steady, staccato regularity as the old was chipped away to
prepare for the new. It seems more blunt and abrasive for them.

Brutality was the only mans of dislodging the childlike credulity
I had too long maintained at the expense of hard lessons.

Sooner or later, we all lose a bit of our smile. If it helps at all,
I'm still smiling on the inside. I'm not done yet. And by the way....
Thanks for the concern! It does bring a smile to my face.

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