The Untimely Death Of High Hopes

Remember when you were a little kid, and you'd be given a balloon? Sometimes it'd be just a vendor on the street trying to drum up interest for a local business and sometimes it'd be from a birthday party, but one way or another you often wound up with balloons a lot more than one would expect to. And you'd cling ever so tightly to that little string, knowing that the second you let go of it, it'd float away and you'd never see it again. You couldn't dare risk that, this balloon was you friend now! You had to protect it at all costs. Sometimes, growing up, I wouldn't throw balloons away; instead, I'd let them slowly deflate in a corner of my bedroom while I watched, because to throw them out meant they were disposable, and as a person who grew up believing she was disposable, that wasn't an act I was about to perform on something else.

But eventually, the balloons did go away. They deflated, they got popped or, worse case scenario, you accidentally let go for just a split second, long enough to watch it soar into the atmosphere above and feel the grief of losing something you once considered - even momentarily - so very precious. I think we're all a little like balloons. I know I've certainly been let go, deflated and, on more than one occasion, nearly popped throughout the course of my lifetime. So let's talk about balloons.

And how their abrupt disappearance from our lives as adults can be just as devastating as anything else.

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There were a lot of things that, as a kid, we saw more than we ever see as adults. Weird, isn't it? For instance, the concept of friendship as a child was so very important to most children, but as an adult it almost feels like a chore, doesn't it? To communicate with people? To make plans to see one another? Exhausting. Collaboratively planned interaction is not something I ever look forward to, which is probably why I don't have many friends these days, but hey, I've always been a woman who was better off on her own than with others, so that works for me. So many things that seemed normal as kids just seem so abstract now though, honestly. And I don't mean things that disappeared simply because technology advanced and I got older, no, I'm not discussing things like payphones or overhead projectors. I'm talking about things that, as children, I think we all assumed we'd see for the rest of our lives, like balloons, for example.

Correct me if I'm wrong - which happens more often than you'd expect - but...didn't it seem like balloons used to be fucking everywhere? What happened? I know that the slow death of helium is one excuse, but seriously, balloons seemed inescapable. Parties, zoos, circuses, hospitals, drug stores, you name it and there were balloons there. Now on the rare off chance I happen to walk into a drug store or some other sort of place when I occasionally visit society, I never see balloons. I know that Walmart still sells them in their deflated form, stuffed like sardines into a bag in the "party" section, but that's about it. Hell, even The Dollar Tree doesn't seem to have balloons anymore. Overall, the balloon seems to have gone the way of the dinosaur, and nobody really seems to have noticed or cared.

Why did we cling so desperately to that string? Was it because we knew how easy it was to float away from the ones who were supposed to be keeping us grounded? How just one little mistake, one casual little slip, and you yourself could forever be floating freely and ineffectually throughout the skies, throughout life, with no one to ground you? Maybe I'm reading too much into this, maybe I'm letting something as simplistic as a balloon be too much a metaphor and the novelist in me is showing, but...

...I honestly think that's why. As children, the idea of permanence becomes more and more shattered the older - and thusly more disillusioned - we become. Once grandparents and pets start to die, once we start to change schools, once things are no longer the way we had grown accustomed to them, we finally begin to understand that permanence is a nice idea, sure, but just that, an idea. Nothing more. And nothing is more appropriate a visual metaphor for the idea that permanence isn't permanent than balloons, honestly. No matter how beautiful they may be, no matter how much happiness they may bring in the moment, they always deflate, they always pop, they always float away, and we're left ultimately wondering what the point of it all was.

I don't know about you, but me personally, I've never once felt like anything was built to last. Perhaps that's what growing up in a volatile family will do to you, where a home is more a prison than a sanctuary, where parents are more executioners than the person granting pardons, but nothing has ever seemed like it was supposed to be there forever. Even when I was a little girl, I never once got the impression that something would stick around, be it a person or an object. Maybe it came from watching my uncle - the only other openly queer person in my family - slowly wither away from Aids when I was 5, or maybe it was the fact that my grandparents on my stepfathers side were brutally murdered when I was in elementary school, but whatever the reasoning was, nothing ever felt forever.

As a kid, I saw balloons a lot. I was in and out of the hospital often in my early adolescence, and between that and birthdays, I spent a hell of a lot of time around balloons. Seemed like they would always be there, until one day - almost like everything else throughout my life - they weren't.

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When you were younger, were you ever told you always had your head in the clouds? Because I certainly did. I don't know, maybe it's something girls hear more than boys, and maybe girls daydream more, I have no idea, but I do know that I was often told I always had my head in the clouds.

As children, we often have high hopes, high aspirations, are far too ambitious for our own good or to know that a lot of what we think we could eventually achieve isn't actually attainable. We think we can be astronauts, or firemen, or (god forbid in my case) artists, and that we can grow up to be happy, only to eventually be worn down and deflated, until we finally pop. As adults, it's almost as if someone let the helium out of us and now those once bright, bouncy colorful beings we were are only a distant memory. And sadly, more often than not, many of us don't wind up with people to ground us, to hold tight to our strings and keep us forever from floating away into the big blue nowhere. Sometimes we find someone who might be willing, but if you're like me and have a lifetime of people getting you to trust them only so they can once again disappoint or hurt you, you became wary of anyone willing to be your grounder. It's inherent distrust too, so it's not even something you choose to do, it's something you instinctively do, like breathing.

Lord knows I've had people try to deflate me, try to pop me, try to get me to finally let go and float away for good, and somehow I've always stayed grounded. Much like that balloon in the corner of your room from that friends party 6 months ago, I refuse to die. I still want to be in the sky, my head in the clouds, my ambitions and dreams high as hell, but I don't want to lose sight of the ground beneath me either. I don't want to be let go. I want to stay close to those grounding me, the few they may be, and - like a balloon - continue bringing them happiness if and when I can manage to. My flights of fancy, my enormously high hopes and big dreams, they're all still there in the sky waiting to be reached, but they become harder and harder with each passing year, with each continuing failure, with each bit of helium let out of me at random intervals. It feels as though it's impossible to reach those same heights of joy or the possibility of achieving my goals when I keep being deflated bit by bit, but I refuse to pop. I refuse to be let go into the sky above, floating into an eternal ether of blue eternity, all because someone was mean to me. I'm mean to me too, so nobody can hurt me at this point more than I hurt myself. If anyone is going to pop this balloon, it's going to be me.

I'm not a little girl anymore (despite what my mental defects may try and tell you), but my head is still just as high in the clouds as it ever was, and it likely always will be. At least up there, anything is possible.

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In times of great peril, when I've felt at my most unsafe, when I've felt like I could easily float away never to return...I have been lucky enough to have someone grounding me. Holding my hand the way a child holds a balloon string, keeping me from soaring to such terrifying and dizzying heights above. That person is my longtime girlfriend. Not a lot of people are lucky to have that, but I have it, and I'm grateful for it. Sure, there may be times where things aren't the best, but ultimately I know that no matter what - no matter how deflated I may get, or the times I want to pop myself - I'll always have someone ready to hold my string and keep me tethered to life.

I still want to reach those heights. My hopes and dreams are still high, but I want to stay on the ground as much as possible as well. There's something comforting in the middle of the two, finding a balance between earth and sky. I think that balance, if found, can bring the best of both worlds.

I don't see balloons very often anymore. When I do, they've already been popped, or they're floating away into the sky above, likely to be hit by airplanes or power lines. But every now and then I'll see a balloon, or rather a child with a balloon, and I'll think to myself, "Don't ever let go of that. You're not ready to lose something so precious." And a balloon shouldn't be precious, but to a child everything is. Everything is your friend, especially when you can't make real friends. So keep those balloons in your room for as long as possible and use them for ridiculous metaphors on blogs nobody reads as you try to quell your steadily declining mental health.

I like to think that they'd do the same for you.