You're a Firework

"Do you ever feel like a plastic bag

Drifting through the wind, wanting to start again?

Do you ever feel, feel so paper-thin

Like a house of cards, one blow from caving in?

Do you ever feel already buried deep?

Six feet under screams, but no one seems to hear a thing?"

Yes, Katy Perry, I do.  Maybe it's because we seem to have skipped over most of fall and gone right to winter this year (I measure this by the amount of time between air-conditioning and heating the house).  Maybe it's the time change, which affects me more negatively every year, mentally and physically.  Maybe it's because after almost 20 years in the same job, and only a little over a year in my current one, I haven't quite rediscovered my place in the world.  Maybe it's seeing my daughters grow up, the younger who just turned fourteen a couple days ago and the older who will be nineteen this weekend and is in her first year of college.  

Maybe it's none of these things, and I'm just a little messed up right now.  I really feel like I'm falling through the cracks.  Like I'm being left behind.  Like no one understands and I don't have the words to help them try or the energy to use the words I have.  I'm depressed.  I know it, I said it.  This is my therapy.

Do you feel like this?  Right now?  Ever?  If I look only at Facebook, I come to the conclusion that a lot of people do.  The anger.  The insecurity.  The anxiety.  The ugliness.  That's all rooted in the feeling that we're screaming and no one hears us.  Some of us are one bad day from spiraling.  Some are one car repair from complete financial ruin.  Some are one vote from giving up completely.  Or one negative reaction to a post on something they're passionate about.  Or one rainy day.  

It feels like darkness is there, 24/7.  Pursuing us.  Surrounding us.  Stealing our memory of the light.  But darkness is quiet.  It invites reflection.  It begs for the light to break it, even if it's just a tiny flame:

"Own the night

Like the fourth of July

'Cause baby, you're a firework,

Come on, show 'em what you're worth (come on, let your colors burst)."

Maybe it's dark because we haven't lit the light that's within us.  A firework is nothing without flame.  Just a little stick of dynamite.  Boring, inactive, of little value.  And that's what we are when we feel like this, an unlit firework.  But if we remember the flame we have within (and we all have it, or we wouldn't be here), we can unlock the potential inside ourselves to make the world take notice.  To let our colors burst.

"Boom, boom, boom,

Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon,

It's always been inside of you, you, you,

And now it's time to let it through."

Own the night.  Own the darkness.  Own the pain and depression and discomfort and disconnection.  But don't forget that you also own the light.  You have color and sound and beauty within.  And the world needs your color and sound and beauty to counteract the dark and the silence and the ugliness.  "You're original, cannot be replaced."  One little blog post is not doing to lift the darkness you or I are feeling right now.  But I hope it helps you remember that you are worthy, you are special, you are needed in this world.  "Baby, you're a firework."  

(song lyrics from "Firework" by Tor Erik Hermansen, Mikkel Ericksen, Katy Perry, Esther Dean, Sandy Julien Wilhelm)