Remember how it felt to believe in what you feel? When in our youth we held our emotions on the fabric of our sleeve and felt as if we had discovered sadness and anger. When we looked at the world as if it was ours and just knew that we could be the ones to change it. How we thought we’d live on mars and drive a pink Cadillac and come back to reunions as rock stars in skinny slinky dresses with a movie star on our arm.
Remember when we believed in all of the things we feel before people started telling us that feeling them was wrong? When they started telling us we were naive and emo and how you can’t cry at work or in front of people. How no one was going to save the world after all so take your desk job and your pay check and go home and watch tv.
We lost something along the way when we stopped believing in love and a better world and when we let our fear be the place from where we drove our heart. We were all those kids standing up for change. We were once those loud voices yelling for a better world. We were all ready to feed the poor and give voice to the downtrodden, until we became the downtrodden, or forgot the poor, or lost our voice.
Change never seems to stick and the same problems that confront us now are just a new shape to all of the things that have always vexxed the world. We stumble on old words that fit the current situation exactly and we are amazed that someone from so long ago knew just how things would turn out. Knew just how we’re feeling now and we wonder if they were a time traveler or a psychic, but the real reason is so much sadder and so much more everyday – nothing has changed. We are the same cavemen protecting our clan from outsiders and feeding our bodies hunks of meat. We are fighting the same wars against different people. We are arguing the same points with different words. We are still barely getting by and dying and falling hard into despair.
I can’t give anyone hope. I can’t bring anyone change. I was the hopeful youth in torn jeans and fresh skin. I was the hope of tomorrow.
Now I’m everything I was fighting against. Suburban mom, 2 kids, 2 cars, 2 much, 2 fat… I’m what the hopeful future never thinks they will be. And the hopeful youth buried deep in me despises it.