I Used to Think Life Was Meaningless

by Xenia Marie Ross Viray

I used to think life was meaningless

When I was a twelve or thirteen, I was super into dark and depressing things. I thought it was really cool to read the tortured poetry of Jim Morrisson and find other suburban kids who sought to be different, even if all they could manage to find in their seeking was the same shirt from Hot Topic. 

While those times were an artificial dabbling in the aesthetic of sadness, I actually experienced deep depression multiple times in my life. I had anxiety so severe that I was certain if I rode the subway I would fall. I paid more money than I had for a prescription to make me functional. And I needed it and I am glad I gave it to myself.

Moving to New York at 18 years-old a few weeks before 9/11 was so disorienting I didn't even feel the tragedy completely. Instead I felt utter confusion, and was unable to orient myself to the world at all. 

Who I was in high school had no relevance in this new context of life. Any small upset felt devastating. Any small hope felt too weighted. 

I couldn't get out of bed except to go to work because my survival depended on it. I didn't want to see anyone. Nothing was funny anymore. 

And now… almost twenty years later, I can say I am going through one of the most difficult soul-cracking moments of my life. My heart is broken daily by the difficulties my family is experiencing and the way our reality is steeped in a heaviness that is just part of life sometimes. Meanwhile, I see the world aghast at horrors that have always been happening; our eyes are opening to the way life is nonchalantly devalued and attacked for reasons that are political, economically-driven, and perhaps, also metaphysical in their root.

Just like 2020, I see narratives being carved out that are meant to displace any form of nuance, individuated perspective, or permission to disagree. 

At the same time, I see parties who benefit from chaos using this as an opportune time to fan the flames of persecution, and a population so ill-equipped to feel their sadness, own their wounds, or grieve together that their unprocessed energy is ricocheting everywhere. 

And yet, I know Life is Meaningful. 
Life is Beautiful. 
And that on every level, life is worth supporting, saving, living, enacting, and trying to understand. 

Underneath everything, whether I agree or disagree, I see the same universal motivations:

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Is who I am ok?
Is what I really feel and think permitted?
Am I going to be alright?

Should I be ashamed of who I am?
 

Life gives us beauty and along with reasons to weep. But somehow, I feel strongly my personal depression will never descend on me again, because deep in my bones I have a sense of meaning that can never be taken away. And this is because I got to know, feel and respect myself, while simultaneously getting to know, feel and respect LIFE itself. We are one in the same.

Meaning shifts.
The ability to trust changes. 
But the core feeling that this must all be for something, 

that every moment is an opportunity to understand how to let LIFE live through you, 

to let the source of everything exist through you

to let love flow in you… 

This deep faith will never ever will ever go away.

And yet, my faith in it does not require me to minimize anything that runs counter to it, 

the parts within me that witness senseless violence,

and impossible sadness,

or the people around me that I don't understand,

who don't understand me. 

My faith in Life is not affronted by anyone else's relationship with life.

Instead I feel buoyed knowing that in our own way, we are all like expressing itself. Learning to see this and move with this in mind is our privilege.

Beneath bad logic, 

wounds filled with salt, 

and pain too deep to transmute alone, 

there is that seed of life, 

that light of the heart, 

and if we can find that, 

in everything, we can and will create a new world.   

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