I thought I would start at the end and see how we get there.
So the glow worms are both actual and metaphorical.
My dad used to say that the light at the end of the tunnel was the train coming in to hit you. Which tells you a lot about him.
But I think that the tunnel as a metaphor for life. its ok if we don’t see the light at the end, it means the tunnel keeps going, and in the darkness if you take the time and look up, there is always the possibility of glow worms.
I recently watched this really stupid, surprisingly touching, terrible short series on Netflix called Dash and Lily. About 2 teenagers, they are both 17 living in NY city. They are both self-confessed weirdos and they “read too much” (if that was such a thing). Lily is a biracial girl of ½ Asian and European decent. It is just before Christmas and Lily is lonely because her parents are out of the country, so in a desperate attempt to not feel alone, she writes a dare in a notebook, with the help of friends she leaves the notebook for someone to find at a book shop.
Along comes Dash – your typical gangly white boy, dirty blond, floppy haired, voice pre-maturely deep and gravely. He seems “world-ly” and mature for his age…So they write each other and dare each other to do things, Dash of course hates Christmas and Lily desperately loves it…you get the drift. Shenanigans ensue.
And I was surprisingly touched by this romantic comedy. And god damn if Dash didn’t remind me of my first real boyfriend with his dirty blond floppy hair, too deep slightly gravely voice and faux intellectualism. And oh, I was a lot like lily when I was her age. A bi- racial girl who didn’t fit where she lived, a bookish, awkward teenager. And I too fell in love with the idea of someone who didn’t really exist. Someone who I thought was interesting and intelligent, kind, an intellectual, someone who was certainly more interesting than anyone from the small town I was from. At the end of the story Dash and Lily meet for some sort of romantic evening in the bookshop and that’s sort of where that story ends.
and I wonder what happens next for them… I hope there isn’t a sequel, but I’ll probably watch it if there is. I don’t recommend it, or I do, I don’t know.
This is where the story of Dash and Lily and my story diverge….but it got me to thinking about the choices we make when young that change the direction of our lives and who helps us along the way.
I met this boy, the dirty blond floppy haired one, I went to the big city to study, I moved in with said boy. I made a lot of choices knowing that forging this path would disappoint members of my family, aka my father. Lily is so afraid of doing things to disappoint her family that she rarely makes waves and when she finally starts make her own decisions, I think she behaves in a very self-centered way. I was never terribly afraid of making waves, or I was but did what I wanted anyway. Are we anything but self-centered at 17? Are we anything but self-centered now?
Is there any point in dissecting our lives when we were this young? Am I still the same person, in most instances – I sincerely hope not? But this is just the start of the tunnel and we may have just turned the first corner.
So, let’s skip a head a few years in my story, so I’m in the city studying and living with the dirty blond floppy haired fellow. And surprise! it isn’t going so well, and I knew that the relationship wasn’t good anymore, if it ever was to begin with, but I didn’t know how to break up with someone who so desperately loved me. Any time we talked about how things needed to change, he said he would do better, and he would for a week. With him he had to be the smartest person in the room, any story you had he had one better, if you had an opinion, you would always be wrong. And it was much later I learned to recognize the traits of a narcissist and how they contain the people they are in a relationship with.
I was in my 20s and I didn’t know any of that, I was finishing university and I wanted to continue to perform, with few opportunities in Australia I was looking at going to the UK to live and dance. And i thought here is a good opportunity to leave the relationship by leaving the country. I know this is a terrible way to break up with someone. But I felt like I had no other choice. I could leave without hurting this person, I didn’t have to be the bad guy.
But somewhere along the way I met this OTHER person – who lived in a completely different country than the one i was intending to go. And if you know me you can guess who this foreign gentle man is. If you don’t know me he is currently sitting behind me slightly off camera. Anyway, this is where is tunnel splits in two.
It was after Christmas and sometime around New Year and 2 friends and I decided we needed a break and so we rented a small house a few hours outside of the city for a long weekend getaway. The house was I think in the Southern highlands and we drove out to the middle of nowhere with everything we needed for a long weekend.
I remember being sad because I had finally managed to somehow break up with the bad for me floppy haired one, I was dealing with the emotional fall out of ending a long relationship, and also because I was wondering what to do about this foreign fellow was falling in love with. He had just left back to his country of residence and I wasn’t sure when I would see him again.
Now my friends and I didn’t have any long heart to heart conversations, there were no deep and meaningfuls in the middle of the night. We just hung out together. 3 good friends, reading, eating, napping, swimming. And Here’s a picture….
this weekend was another turn in the tunnel, another step closer to where I am now. I don’t think I had any major epiphany’s, but in some ways major life changing things were taking place inside me. I was thinking about the sort of person I want to be by thinking about the sort of person I want to be with. Or maybe I’m making all this up because …hind sight….
Close to the cabin was a series of caves and abandoned tunnels, and one was a fairly well known for housing a colony of glow worms. I had never seen a glow worm, and I was so excited for the possibility of glow worms! We thought we would stop on our drive home and explore the glow worm cave. Part of the reason we went to this particular cabin was that it was close to the caves. But for a reason I no longer remember, we didn’t actually make it to see the glow worms. But I don’t think that really matters.
Over the years there are been more friends and other great get away cabins. And they all have the same things in common, a desire to just be together and do…well not much. It is in the moments of stillness and quiet that I feel most connected. If I can be in a room with you, on the same couch even and be relaxed and comfortable to not have to say anything at all. Are some of the best times in my life and I have found over the years that I crave these moments. These are my points of light in the darkness the glow worms in the tunnel of life.
SO I do really think that the tunnel is a metaphor for life and its ok if we don’t see the light at the end, it means the tunnel keeps going, and in the darkness if you take the time and look up, there is always the possibility of glow worms.
The darkness in the tunnel doesn’t really matter, as long as you have friends to light your way.
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