breaks, strains and muscle building

It seems, as soon as we are old enough to give form to our dreams, we begin to experience little heartbreaks. and the heartbreaks, like these dreams grow, and form what will become part of the expectations that form our reality.  Fairy tales aren't real but maybe princes are? Princesses and the powerpuff girls are a construction but maybe rockstars are our true saviors? There is no superman, but there is true love.

Sometimes, I think that the kindest gift life can give is enough breathing room, and, possibly a dim enough memory, to mute the impact of these heartbreaks for long enough to fall back in love with each and every dream..

Otherwise, you are stuck with a more difficult task, and one that gets more difficult as experiences pile up and build walls and color your sky and decorate your home. If memory is a robust companion,  you are tasked with the effort of suspending the ongoing cynicism, the encroaching anxiety, the fear and defensive, the numbness that accompanies each new and exciting dream. If you keep that shadow, your effort is to blast it out with a brighter light, and illuminate your hope with the memory of the last dream, now shattered, picked up, constructed into the new beautiful mosaic that still composes belief.

Sometimes I think this is why self medication is so tempting. Not so much to alter your experience, but to protect yourself from your own memory long enough to completely and totally immerse yourself in a swell of promise so overpowering, so moving, that it makes you open your mind to all of the blinding beauty and possibility you felt when you were a child. To create the willing suspension of disbelief in which a new holistic reality is created that looks less like a funhouse mirror and more like a lense into a dream long forgotten.

But then sometimes you don't need drugs, or good strong bump on the head. Sometimes new experiences are afforded to you that come without strings, that resemble something long forgotten and still so foreign that they don't invite context. These are some of the best, and scariest moments of all, if you can use your memory to absorb the awe  of the opportunity.