Of course the cost of a night with friends trying to make the things that mattered not anymore is waking up in no condition to do anything distracting. Plan A is to go downstairs and hide from everything on the couch for a while.

Nope. Turns out it is bright down here too. Sunnier. Why can’t it be rainy today? At least I have a bucket now.

Most of my life I had my father pegged as this stoic person. Life was full of things that needed to be done, because they needed to be done. Because someone had to do them. And while he was never particularly happy about them, although supposedly he once was, at that point they were hoops. Life was hoops most of the time, and I vowed to not live that way myself. When we’d go to camp, things I always figured made him happy, he wasn’t particularly happy about it. I can’t remember him ever happy about it. I can remember many times when he was angry. And I have forever etched in my mind the memory of watching him hug my mother through the window of my grandparents house after she told him the house had burned down, and feeling sad.

I’d have to guess it was mostly the way he grew up. His family isn’t particularly communicative about their feelings. They always look at me sort of awkwardly, unsure how to respond, when I’m frank with them about my own thoughts and feelings.

As time has passed, I’ve seen bits of the man he was through other people’s stories and photos, occasionally some shocking remarks of his own. When I was growing up, he was always seeming disinterested in my feelings, even to the point where he’d tell me that he didn’t want to hear about certain things because he’d worry too much. They all worry too much.

I’m made of many of the same parts. And I grew up around all of this, so I sort off get it. But I have to wonder, or rather, I just don’t get it… independence to what end?

I suppose we’re all looking for something different. We’re lacking different things, or at least believe that we’re lacking them. Myself, challenge, adventure, amazing people in my life. I want connection. Inside me, there’s this part of me that wants to be shared and valued.

And so Dad’s alone. In a big house, in the woods. He’s got lots of channels on the television though. It’s not what he ever thought it would be, it wasn’t what all that independence was fighting for. Was it worth it? I’m sure it wasn’t. I think he has regrets now. Which, is something. Being the incredibly emotional person that I am, I think I can fathom the vulnerability that he was afraid of. Still is afraid of. I’m still embracing those feelings. Can’t help it, don’t know any other way to be. Perhaps my cynicism won’t be so funny some day, and I’ll end up jaded like him. Today would be the day to believe it. I don’t though. It just feels tragic.

I take care of myself well enough. Folks tend to assume that there isn’t anything that they can do for me, because I don’t really need any help. The point is missed though. It isn’t important that I can do something for myself, it’s that someone values me in their life enough to do something for me. There’s much in that gesture that makes life worthwhile… meaningful.

You can force people to bend, you can drag them along somewhere, but it’s they open their heart that life has importance.

Sometimes I think people value me for the wrong reasons. Sometimes I sit in my chair in the office, trying to solve some complex technical problem, and I focus in at a pixel on the screen and revel in how complicated life is, to what end? This is a “stop and smell the flowers” feeling, where I remember that while I like all of these things, and I’m interested in how they work, this isn’t my life. Yet so much of my life that isn’t the important part seems to get the time and energy.

There’s some value in maintaining an intentional state of innocence. I’m reluctant to try to make sense of people at times, and instead focus on trying to build empathy for their humanity. Problems at work are challenging, and they’re interesting. Other human beings finding a place for you in their heart is magnificent. Which is to say, I can’t make people like me, but I can be willing to let it happen. Because when you leave that door open, and someone walks through on their own accord, that’s love, and that’s what I’m getting at. It only matters when they choose it. This doesn’t make it any less devastating when they don’t choose it. That’s the cost.

The alternative? A gerbil wheel to some end until you’re just watching basketball on satellite alone in the woods?

No, I’m not going to end up like my father. I love. Nobody seems to know what to do with this. It’s been difficult living with that. It’s a burden on people. They don’t want to admit it. They profusely chant that it isn’t a burden. I’ve heard it before. I’ll likely hear it again. As time goes on, I’m less and less ashamed of it. I feel like my heart is a star alone in a dark sky, a bit of brightness surrounded by darkness. For so long I’ve felt alienated by this contrast. Folks want my heart to fit into their understanding of the world. It doesn’t. It won’t. That’s fine.

Where was I? Mom said to hold on to the good things. Sure. I still have many people I value in my life. The trouble is putting so much hope in your hands, and holding them fully outstretched, knowing someone could knock them down at any moment, but knowing what you want to build is worth so much more than that risk. That vulnerability, opening up and choosing to allow someone into your life, knowing that they could decide that they don’t value you that much, that your presence isn’t that important, and still doing it. That’s worth it.

You can keep stoic Dad, I like my heart.