The Bright Side

One line of one song that won't leave me alone.

“It’s a person who can see the bright side through the dark times when there ain’t one.”

Sweat falling on the black bar between my legs, quads gassed but not working alone because “posterior chain” y’all. Heart pounding, legs pumping, muscles screaming.

Grinding.

I was trying to kill myself on the Peloton. Not literally, but I was attempting to extinguish something. The malaise of last week’s emotional rollercoaster. That sour in my soul. I wanted it gone. The week was over. Tomorrow its June. New month. No memories. Summer’s coming.

Let’s grind.

This line from NF’s song “Hope” came as I bent my head, so close to done-sauce but unwilling to bow out early.

I sat down, descending recovery. Dripping everywhere despite my arctic basement, I toweled off and let the lactic acid leak back to my lymph nodes. The blood pounded in my head, a few bright lights going off behind my eyes. Not quite to failure, but close. And that line…it was in my ears.

“It’s a person who can see the bright side through the dark times when there ain’t one.”

The song itself is actually a battle between “Nate”, the embodiment of NF’s first thirty years and “NF”, his current self. It’s an ode to letting go, maybe even shoving off, all that doesn’t serve you and stepping into and up to a future that’s not ruled by pain, fear, regret, shame, or anger. NF uses this line as part of his answer to the question, “What is my definition of success?”

I remember my dark times. In recent years they all, literally all, have come in the month of May. All the pain, fear, regret, shame, and anger. One month, and sadly one that cannot be removed from the calendar, and therefore must be revisited annually, some cruel constant that keeps me from exercising my most exceptional coping mechanism - emotional avoidance.

I got off the bike still thinking about that line. Am I a person who sees the bright side even when there’s not one? Did I? In the midst of all that suffering, could I?

I don’t think so.

And that bugged me, like a gnat flying in and out around my head, the buzzing of that line in and out of my ears drove me crazy.

Why wasn’t I that kind of person? What does it take to be that kind of person?

I gratefully don’t have to fight with the person of my past. She’s grown and evolved, but she was never mired in all that ugly. But, I often have to fight the trauma hangover that threatens to overtake this me…especially in May.

It remembers the hospitals, the Hospice, the host of drugs, machines, and appointments.

It laughs at my attempts to work, to parent, to live while managing all of that.

It tells me I’m shameful for not wanting to be a caregiver.

It tests me with echoes of the exhaustion, the disembodiment, the loneliness of those days.

It whispers…”It is not over. It will never be over.”

It is like standing in a calm ocean, knowing that a storm could kick up at any second and drown me in her waves, suck me under with her tow, or just bury me with her magnitude.

When visibility is low, they say people drown in water because they can’t find the light and swim in the wrong direction.

How do you find the bright side?

In the midst of the dark times, people often asked me how I did it. I thought that was a stupid question, frankly, still do. What choice did I have? The mind and body are machines when they must be.

And there are crutches that help us hobble through our worst moments.

Coffee. Wine. Bread. Reese’s Pieces. Insta-cart.

I’m thinking now the question I was waiting for, the one I thought they were going to ask, is the one I now ask myself.

How do you find the bright side?

Crutches open a momentary portal to some version of light, but their effect is short lived. I often wouldn’t finish my wine, stomach turning sour the longer I sipped. I sucked down coffee to stay awake, wrapping my hands around the mug to feel some kind of warmth in my day. Insta-cart is just sanity and toilet paper and bread is just a fuck-you excuse to eat carbs. Reese’s Pieces may have been the light. If there were ever a candy masquerading as hope…

I jest. Mainly because I don’t know the answer.

I don’t think this question is the same as so many others. It’s not about finding gratitude or small joys or self care or peaceful pauses. It’s not about getting a break from survival; it’s about trusting that there’s something beyond survival.

Through every single one of my dark times, I knew I would survive. But I never once thought beyond that. I wasn’t about finding the bright side. I was about finding the other side.

I’m on the other side now.

My mother has been dead for six years, and while I still want to call her first when something of import happens in my day, I no longer forget and physically dial her number.

My husband, Humpty Dumpty, seems to understand now, mostly, that he is an egg who has been superglued and plated back together and therefore should not mess around with walls anymore.

I don’t wake up feeling hollow.

But that line haunts me. Because I still don’t know how to find the bright side. And when dark times come again, as they inevitably will, I want to be the kind of person who can find it, or at least, one who is willing to try.

Joy is laughing at me, amused at my struggle. She knows where the bright side be. Of course she does. I hope she’ll show me, in time, now that she knows I’m willing to put the work in. That I don’t want to be just an other side kind of person, that even in the darkest darks, I want to be looking for the light.

This is my personal challenge. Brought to the forefront as it so often is by one line of one song on one day in one moment where I was in a place to hear it. But so much more than just this one line, the entire song has great value. It’s a reminder of what happens when we let ourselves and our lives be ruled by the “dark side.” And a testament to what can be when we find more than just “the other side.”

It’s worth a watch.