Day 40: The Labyrinth

"I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful"

Good morning readers, I hope you’re doing well. I really do.

One of my all time favorite book is Looking for Alaska. I know, I hear you, it just sounds like a cliché book for me to like, that I’m just like every other teenager who thinks the world is going to revolt around them. Maybe. But I feel like the book really does mean something to me. A lot, actually. That’s why it’s my favorite. Alaska Young is probably the best character that has ever been crafted in my mind, and all she does is so clear and real that I can see it in person. Probably because I have. She brought all of us to the Great Perhaps, just to leave us there and exit her own Labyrinth.

“It’s not life or death, the labyrinth. Suffering. Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That’s the problem. Bolivar was talking about the pain, not about the living or dying. How do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering? Nothing’s wrong, but there’s always suffering” 

Before Alaska left, I had the best time of my life. Yeah, maybe there’s some imperfection but I was the same, typical kid who would play soccer, read comics, sneak out of the house to play video games, pretend to sleep to not do homework. I was young, innocent, and happy.

After she did, nothing was the same.

They never were.

I don’t want to say my life went downhill from there, because I don’t know where I’m at and where I’m going. Maybe when Alaska left, my life would eventually turn out to be better than if she’s still here. I know they say things get worse before they get better, and I’ll give it a try. But sometimes, just sometimes, this worse feels too big.

I know we all suffer. Everyone is stuck in a maze in life and no matter how much we pretend that we’re happy, somewhere inside we still feel the suffering burning and suffocating your mind. I don’t think our sufferings should be, or even can be compared, but they are undeniably different. We all try to find a way to escape it, but we never can.

“I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it did not exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in a back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home.”

We all suffer because we all know better. We blame ourselves for knowing better yet still falling to that same mistakes. We blame ourselves for trusting others. We blame ourselves for getting too attached. We blame ourselves for what we did, and moreso, what we didn’t.

Once we drop all the expectation for ourselves, we’ll stop blaming and stop suffering. That’s the way out of the labyrinth.

That’s also death.

“After all this time, it seems to me that straight and fast is the only way out – but I choose the labyrinth. The labyrinth blows, but I choose it.”

I don’t know if there’s ever a way to escape my labyrinth.

I don’t know if there’s ever a way for you to escape yours.

But maybe, if our labyrinths are connected, that yours and your friends’ find the secret door to each other’s maze, we’ll be able to share the burden of wondering around aimlessly trying to escape. Maybe now, you want to stay in the labyrinth, and make something out of it.

Don’t walk alone.

And don’t try to find a way out.

Love.

                                                                                                                                       Always,

                                                                                                                                       Denny