I think I've found joy, listening to the laughter of kids who are not my own, the murmur of community outside my window. The icy glass of isolation fogged only by my own insistence that it isn't there. I can open a window.
And a reminder, a goal. Circled I'm bright orange around the divisible number, I march on. I choose to live. This point, the tipping point. Five months out. Five.
The upcoming year, voices raised in elation as the winter holidays march in, rolling fall underfoot, and I will be viciously alive. I choose to live. I draw my line in the sand, and choose to live. Choose to find joy.
With the daylight I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders, and as night falls I set it down to rest. Familiar hands a firm anchor, reminding me I don't have to lift all alone. Five months out.
I want to capture this moment in my mind. I want to remember, forever, that I choose to live.
I choose to chase the dream of watching others dance around a bonfire, and forget the contents of the box I tossed in it. I choose to believe that one day I will need no more boxes. I choose to watch others make art, make life, feel love and be loved, to raise their voices to the heavens and love love love.
I'm not a sociologist. I can't tell you in what ways communities form, what level of cohesion is needed to spring forth co-opts and polycule run farms. I couldn't tell you what is needed to support the downtrodden specifically, how culture blooms in the rich garden of collectivity and where that takes us.
But I can feel the gravitational pull of it, bringing people together. Maybe I can't quantify it, I can't measure it correctly or put a name to it. But I can feel it. And I choose to feel it.
And on the day we turn 25, still living, having faced down the so called God that tried so hard to strike us down, I know we will continue to choose to live. Not because I had no other way. Not just because death provides no data.
I choose to live, and I choose joy.
