Pushing Through

Every day is hard. Let me tell you that much. Every day is hard, but the reason why we keep going on is because we have to. Or I have to anyway. A friend emailed me, a friend who lost her father, and she said that I had to just keep going on, or in her words, "keep taking my vitamins" and try to stay healthy, even if I had to force myself. So every morning, I eat my healthy breakfast and take my multivitamin and chew my 2 calcium caramel pills and eat my fiber-rich cereal and I run my 30 minutes a couple times a week because I have to. Another friend said that I didn't have to do anything. That there weren't any have-to's. Ok, she said this before I talked to my other friend about the vitamins. But I think they were both right (even though the anti-have-to friend is actually a doctor, a PhD in psycho-something-or-other). But really--they were both right.

I had a dream the other night that my teacher said, or exclaimed rather--even in dreams people can speak to me in exclamation points--she said "come back to class already!" And by class she meant taiko of course. But anyway, she said come back to class already(!) and I think I ought to. I mean, I did go back to class once, but it was downright painful. It wasn't an Aiko class, just regular class, and my exclaiming teacher wasn't the one teaching, and we were kind of struggling our way through one of the Aiko songs we played for the concert, but it just wasn't the same. I was kiaing in an effort to get my other classmates to kiai, because a kiai is such an essential part of a song. I wanted to create a kiai-contagion, but it wasn't catching on, and the spirit of the class just wasn't the same as with the Aiko group. It's depressing because there really isn't Aiko anymore. Not that there's anything wrong with the regular class, but it's just not the same.

But really, that's not why I'm depressed. Or maybe that's part of it.

I googled "taiko" and "grieving" and the hits that came back were either kind of campy in the touchy-feely way "writing" and "grief" will get you on google, or just not applicable. I don't know--you know sometimes people who are writers will try to make a few bucks by holding workshops in writing that will help you get through your grief or whatever it is that's holding you back by basically getting you to journal your way through the process. Oh my god--yawn! (Rolling of the eyes).

I guess why I didn't get any good hits was because maybe taiko and grief just don't go hand in hand like that. I mean my whole thing is that you don't play taiko without a kind of joy in you. You always have those gigs where you play taiko at weddings, but never at funerals. I was actually wondering about when I died, and I would want taiko at my funeral, but what song in the whole reparatoir (sp?) of all the taiko that I know in the whole world would I want played?

What happens when all the joy in you has left you and the only good thing you remember from that other life you had--the life before grief--was taiko. That's my happy thought--you know, like when Peter Pan (or Robin Williams in Hook, anyway) needed the happy thought to get his ass off the ground and soaring again--taiko is my happy thought, but it's not there anymore. Not in the same way. Aiko was always an experiment, an experiment with no guarantees going on beyond that one concert in November. I need to find a way to get beyond that.

Ugh. What would you do? If you're out there reading this, which I don't know that many people, or even just a few, are, then please tell me. What would you do? What keeps you going? How do you push through?