the Last Lecture - my last lecture
In any given lecture, people tend to wait for the nice, condensed, seven-word truths that hold the answers to life's big problems in a neat little package. There might be quite a roundabout way of getting to those long-anticipated phrases (especially in the Last Lecture itself), but they are still woven within the careful framework of the lecture somehow, serving as pillars and cornerstones that provide the foundation for any noteworthy public-speaking opportunity. Unfortunately for you, this particular bit of writing will probably wobble and sway on shaky legs all throughout, but please bear with me. Though everyone may write that what they have to say is important (and while it still is, by all means), please remember that I'm still included in the mixture.
I have lived with trichotillomania since I was in the 5th grade. I'm not sure what started it, and I still don't know how to stop it, though both counseling and self-help methods have kept it under control for short amounts of time. I pulled and still pull my hair out - literally. Eyelashes, eyebrows, and occasionally the hair on my arms when I'm in the midst of a particularly stressful situation. When I'm overwhelmed, I put a hand to my forehead, feel the hair between my fingers, start, and find myself unable to stop. It's honestly like a magnet draws my fingers back for more every time. At home, I force myself to walk calmly into the bathroom after I am done and witness the damage... seeing that destruction is probably one of the most horrifying things a person can do to themselves. How can so much mental pleasure from pulling out a hair cause such agony as well? As I sit here, it is now at the worst it has ever been out of the entire 5 years. I hide what I look like with an eyeliner pencil every day, and each morning I carefully redraw the shape of my brows like an artist with a special kind of crayon... perhaps it is one of my better-kept secrets, though I'm not ashamed at telling anyone who asks. I still look and feel out of place in the mirror before I shut off the light and run down to breakfast, and truly I hope that everyone with appearance issues understands their true beauty. You are absolutely gorgeous. All of you are masterpieces, no matter what, because when the makeup and clothes are stripped away, you are still you. You still have a face that belongs to you, one that is recognizable in a mirror when you go to take a quick, self-conscious peek. You might have zits and spots and flakes and everything under the sun, but you look yourself. Me, I remain an alien. In stores I'll catch myself watching someone across the aisle and then suddenly realize it's only me, reflected.
And what has that done to me? I suppose I harbor much jealousy, and I'll go ahead and say it outright. But it took me a long time to feel what I know to be normal and just... be the person that I am, a person who is certainly a vast improvement from before. It took immense amounts of courage to raise my hand, get up in front of the class, or speak to someone I hardly knew, and I mostly avoided these things (and still do) because I always felt that more than just one pair of eyes were watching me... sorting me into a place I knew I didn't truly belong in. I prefer being alone than being wildly social, but now I know that it is my choice to be this way and not something I feel forced upon me by social boundaries. It's ok to be problematic. It's perfectly acceptable to fear walking through crowds and ringing doorbells, answering phones, ordering food, but I live with the consequences of the actions I either take or don't take because it is my choice - and there's Life Lesson #1. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, and I try to no longer wait for the welcoming arms every time because disappointment hurts. (I prefer to be surprised anyway.) I receive what I give, and I try to live with the consequences of both the giving and receiving. No longer do I feel trapped and unable to do anything about the way my life was led.
Living with consequences. This is really the first time for me that I've ever openly discussed what I believe about the afterlife, but it's important, so again... bear with me. Let me present it to you in this way... imagine falling asleep. Imagine a peaceful dream, closing your eyes at the world and quietly, silently fading towards a deep, velvety darkness that wraps you in its loving embrace when the day is done. Rest is necessary at the end of a long, winding road, and I do not fear dying and leaving what I ultimately will leave behind. But today, whether or not I am right, whether or not sleep is the right analogy, whether or not anyone can know for sure, I will live the life under the morals that I know to be right and fair, both creating and destroying relationships as I live, and I will feel what I have time to feel before closing my eyes that final time. I may live hungry, I may live homeless. I may die of thirst or drowning, or learn what it is like to both save and be saved from those and many other things. I want to be widowed, I want to be broke, I want to escape the comfort that is the Great Desire and feel the extremes that most wish only to avoid. I will love and cherish what I please, desire what I please, and write... good God, I will write. Write of you. Write of the impact you had on me, and what impact I hope I made on you. Regardless of both, I will live. I want to live. Today I can hold his hand and be loved, and we all need to feel loved. Any excuse is futile; we absolutely, always need love. We forget that love is good, but it is still good, and whatever you love, love it to pieces. Love it until your heart can't understand loving something that much because that is when the happy-tears come, and then you know you've made it. Today, this day, it is mine. Carpe diem. Both the things that fall to pieces and the things that are built from nothing are mine and mine alone. I am the sculptor, and I will do as I please.
I said before I honestly prefer being alone, and that is true. But isolation is both necessary and self-destroying, and cynicism is a very dangerous line to toy with. I have lost the ability to have confidence in almost any interpersonal situation, although speaking in front of crowds or presenting is absolutely fine. But why? Why is it the individual I am afraid of? I'm not quite sure I have the answer to this yet, but I'm trying. I sit and listen to the choruses of "I don't get it," "this is stupid," "I don't want to be here" and I'm drowning, I'm drowning. Maybe I'm afraid because the world has already fallen into the hands of these people and it terrifies me that this is my future... these are the doctors and medics and businessmen of this country and I'm afraid. I can't watch the news anymore. I can't read about more deaths and people forming opinions that only start arguments; I can't hear about a mother and her child killed on the subway by terrorists that are fighting solely in the name of God. Every piece of history I had learned came with a kind of shining heroic status in my mind, but the people that have made history hardly deserve the pedestal. Columbus wiped out an entire Native American people. Thousands upon thousands of cruel, prolonged deaths, and yet we have a holiday in his name. How do I forget that? I can't forge interpersonal relationships because what I want to learn from you is not what I end up getting... what I want to learn from anything or anyone is not what I eventually come to discover. No one is perfect, and this I am not asking. But cynicism - the cruel, cold truth - I have to tune it out somehow, or the bigger things that are out of my control will start to smother the smaller things that end up becoming so unbelievably important later on. So I turn to you. You are not a statistic. You are important to me. You're important to everyone, and you combat the world and what has happened so far within it. You are change. You are not Ghandi's simple, overused, 10-word "be the change you want to see in the world" laminated inspirational poster that so many of us have learned to glance past. You ARE change.
In my life, I do what I like because there is no other way to live. If this is all I will ever have, all of what I can see both behind and before me, then I know my limits, and I will do what I like between them until time runs out. And I like what I do so far. I'm happy today, I expect to be happy tomorrow, and I'm still learning. That's all I can say. Through all of what I have seen and felt both about myself and others, I still feel ok. Some days aren't so great, but things pass more quickly than you'd expect, and that's the one thing that we can guarantee will happen day or night.
I can honestly say that I would be nowhere else in life than right here, right now, with you, with him, and with myself as the person I am. Sure, I regret things, but there is no use for it and I try not to linger on what I've missed out on. For the first time... I can look up and see the stars, because they were only hiding behind the clouds.