I have found that the closer I get to joy, the crazier my life becomes. It doesn't matter if I'm experiencing joy, finding more people with joy in there lives, or simply becoming more comfortable with joy as a concept, the closer I get to it the faster my life seems to fly into chaos.
This has terrified me. It confirms to me and to others that I am not on the right path, cannot possibly be making the right choices, and that what I have experienced simply can not be real joy. That pleasure and excitement, the buoyant feeling that left me with more love in my heart and kindness for my fellow man could not have been real, must have been a lie because look, just look at what has followed!
I have let chaos rage and howl and send me fleeing back to my cave to wait it out in silence and confinement.
But I'm tired of silence and confinement. I am exhausted from holding myself in a space that was never meant for me, from quieting a song that refuses to be unsung. I am left empty chasing acceptance from a world that is incapable of accepting anything but a lie.
And I finally realize something. Chaos follows joy, not because it wasn't real, but because too much of what I have can only exist in misery. As those things run screaming from my joy, anything that was built upon them will come crashing down. So, do I let it?
Do I let joy be the destruction of my misery and do I let go of all it was attached to? Do I let the cracks appear and consume my cave until I am left exposed and vulnerable in my joy?
This time, am I brave enough?