The nihilism I feel waiting outside for me, is often more insidious than it might seem. Sometimes it seems like so much happens that insists that I'd be best to abandon what I hold to be important. Sometimes everything seems to devalue and shrink before some harsh light. On valentines day I wrote about the first time I realized that love isn't ever certain, or even ever really lasting. It almost destroyed me because I had found so much joy and so much love within myself that I never had before. The erosion of a bastion I had built within my life left me feeling that nothing could ever be really safe. And I would lose all I cared about. Who could keep caring without some safe place where their feelings were always returned? Without some person to love them when they don't have any emotion of their own, much less to give? But nihilism didn't claim me there. I found value in wandering, without a safe fastness to secure myself. I learned that however hard, you can survive alone long enough to hide your heart in semi-sure places. To go forth in a landscape of only half-trusted places to rest and use.

I miss thinking that there could be safe places. But I am happy. And I have no safe place. That is probably better. In a strange way, the more and worse the battles I wage to keep my caring and direction, the less vulnerable I become. I have less to lose, less places unexamined.

But there are scars. Some I am proud of, and some I leave unannounced, under clothing or camoflage. And they remain different from ever having such weakness, of course. They tug at me through memory or recirculation. I see churches and I remember God. I see schools and I remember my School. I see couples who think they'll never lose the trust and passion and partnership, and I remember Love.

There are uncapitalized versions of each that I can find joy in. And I try. (or will try). But the naive trust and expectation that they will fill and remain has gone. I am a better person for it.