I sat curbside, phone in hand, earphones blasting the sounds that would save my soul. People usually speak of a weight on our shoulders, but I had this weight in my chest. Inside of it. Making it hard to breathe and think straight. It was different from pain, you see. Pain is this all-consuming wave that eats your entire body, and while I was suffering I discovered it was possible to just keep falling, never hitting the ground. It’s a nightmare inside a nightmare, an anguish that devours your present and your future.
I was past the pain. It was this weight, this heavy weight, occupying my chest cavity and infiltrating into my stomach. Despair was long gone, but dread and angst made their way into my every bone. I was sitting curbside, looking at the traffic, inhaling the scent of a million flowers. I lifted my eyes up to the sky, as I often do when I’m looking for a sign, begging for help, begging for a way out. “I cannot believe this is my life,” I thought, eyes in the clouds, blaming myself and the universe.
I used to be so grateful. I tried to keep this feeling of gratitude while my life was twisting and turning, but I’ve been blindsided by anger and dismay. All I want to do is let my life implode. Just let it go. That comfort you find in failure, that bitterness is actually quite appealing.
I mean, who else am I failing but me? And don’t I deserve it?
Some days, I am capable of the fiercest recoveries – I dust myself up and I try again. Clean slate, new day, new fight.
But these days, I feel like screaming and kicking, and I don’t have enough middle fingers for all the rage I carry inside.
They say there’s this one day in your life when every piece of the puzzle falls into place, and in the same second you realize why you had to go through so many things, you remember what brought you there, you understand your path and your purpose.
I have recognized this day twice in my life, and I was wrong. I thought I’d found that lever, the one that puts everything in motion, and it all made sense. In both cases, those paths were cut short, but I did not go back. I just created new paths that led me to crazy life choices and situations.
Sometimes you’re stuck in a rut.
Sometimes you desperately want to create a rut, have a structure, lay a foundation that won’t crumble. I’ve always said your life doesn’t have to be defined forever at any given moment.
But I wonder what it’s like to know where you’re going.
I wrote once that one of my mistakes was trying to grow flowers in the middle of stones. That urge to see beyond roadblocks and difficulties, that will to surpass any perceived impossibilities and keep going – that’s what made me so resilient and at the same time too stubborn. Knowing when to give up is as much of a gift as pursuing your goal no matter what happens around you.
