I just wanted to drive around some old neighborhoods and point out houses I used to know. A lot has changed in my head over the past five years, but a large part has remained the same. It’s an uneasy feeling driving with the windows down, on a damp, fall night, after suburbia has closed for the evening. All that’s left is porch lit lamps and empty cars.  No one cares what’s going on outside; everyone’s sedated and preoccupied. I know all too well the people I used to call my friends are no longer involved in my life. It’s sad, and maybe freeing. A part of me feels joy that they’ve found something, or at least somewhere else to fit in. I think that’s what we all are searching for: somewhere to relax and be happy. I hope that’s what people are searching for. I know I am.

I had a mild panic attack driving home. I think it was provoked by sadness and weariness. I am exhausted. I am fighting for something I don’t understand. I am rising every day in search of something I am unsure of. All I know is a direction, and the draw of the faintest signal. I think we all share that faith; that there is something ultimate waiting for us, which is hoping we find it in time.

It’s difficult, that’s for certain. Faith is not easy nor simple. Faith is going to bed every night knowing tomorrow will be full of challenges. It’s staying up late to read, write, or study in the hopes of one day getting the opportunity to prove yourself. It is dedication and dependence. Dedication to an ideal, and a dependence on its existence, for when we lose hope, all motivation is lost. Hopelessness is a closed casket with a gun in your hand.

It’s amazing that we all find ways to survive. Its life’s greatest challenge; finding the reserves to fight, the will to stand up, and the courage to take another step. It’s easier when you have friends. In the end we have to realize that the empty neighborhoods where we grew up are only empty because they have given us all that they could. They taught us what we needed to know, and we moved on. The allure of new friendships that will save us, new places to inspire us, and new experiences that will teach us, is the gravity which allows us to close our eyes at night and which wakes us in the morning.