The pieces I have picked up during my absence, and hopefully some you can pick up too.
|5 minute read|
The dish and the cup clink together as I set my coffee down, nodding to the waitress in agreement for another fill. My friend sits across from me, I’m looking at her face for the first time in three months. I sip in as much of her as I do the black coffee that has too sweet of an aftertaste, but is fine to savor. And we’re rambling our words, jumbling them in the air in front of us, carrying upwards twirling with the music playing through the speakers, announcing to the world that we are here. The words carrying our woes of the time that has passed, our questions of the future, we are here. And we forever will be, existing to one another as much as we’d like, existing to the world in spite. And between sips of coffee she said to me, “Whether you do it or not, the time will pass anyways.” I felt like myself again that day.
The time has been passing me, like it always has, like it always will. Lately the clocks have been turning and I have been staying very still, upholding a very sluggish existence. Absent from my creative endeavors, focused on maintaining the bare minimum, losing the grip I had of self-worth. A portrait of myself so milky, so disillusioned, I was depleted from my simple day-to-day. Whether I liked it or not, whether I used my time wisely, this time is now gone from me. Shelved up in a place I can never go again, embalmed in what was once, framed away by what could have been.
Anger seems to be the easiest emotion to feel with a situation like this. Maybe remorse. A pitiful time, pathetic to recount. Why could I not break free from the gloom that engulfed me? Yet I disagree with the notion that it was not time well spent. I was blinking and breathing, therefore I was learning. I was quiet with myself, other times I was quiet with others, therefore I was learning. I was consumed by things, by feelings, by people, therefore I was learning. Existing is time well spent, no matter what that looks like.
I have not let myself be human as of late, making my existence more difficult than necessary. Like a fish willing itself not to swim or a flower not allowing itself to bloom. And the energy it has taken out of me has been drastically wasteful and borderline inhumane. I locked myself in the bathroom stall and cried warm, sour tears because my hair wasn’t in a perfect bun and the back of my sweatshirt had wrinkles from sitting down in my car. In hindsight, I would like to go back in time and scream in my face, “Who cares! Who cares! Who cares!” But in the moment I wanted to claw my skin right down to the bone, tear chunks of my hair out, see it fall to the floor, form lonely sad piles on the tile. To be human is not to be perfect, and in my head these wires are crossed, bound so tightly to my identity that every day I have to work to untie that knot.
I find myself always stuck on this stage, an endless performance of how I look or how I smell, did I say the right thing, did I seem too negative, am I always complaining, did I do too much, was it not enough? Chasing this idyllic state of being. And the spotlight always stays on, the curtain is never drawn. There she is on stage, a mess of a girl you could maybe call a woman, performing for the wrong gazes desperate for loving attention. Her eyes bloodshot from tears, mascara smudged, but she's smiling and laughing because it's too much to ask of someone to bear your problems for a second, to pass off like a swaddled baby or an unwanted drink. She goes twirling, twirling, twirling, redoing her hair again and again, fidgeting with her clothes picking at her skin. For the encore she sits still, shaking her head as her actions replay again and again in her mind. Repeating her words, her actions, her choices. Wondering if it all was acceptable enough, if they liked her enough, if it will make them want to talk to her more. As she gazes into the audience, there is nobody there, because nobody really cares that much about it all.
A waste of time I think. All of my energy into being some sort of fake illusion of a real person. What did you miss when you were so worried about trivial things! But this is what I know of myself, and each time I begin my spiraling performance, I have these experiences to call upon to help divert from old habits. A human is imperfect. Time goes on, so we are learning.
At a certain point, it does become brutally clear why it is so much easier to stay the same rather than to approach change. There is so much comfort in what we know, a safe haven of our creation. Within this limbo I rest, chained by my comfort, indulging only in my visions of the future. But now is a better time than ever to realize that staying stagnant is the enemy, idling by, day in and day out generates the momentum of still water. And if all I did was write a little, or spend more time with my feet in the grass, I call it enough to encourage more. More words, more ways to create, more conversations, more time. The foot race of change is one step after another.
The wild mess I have become I cannot hide from. I think of myself of another time, sitting in my college apartment, doing french lessons on my phone while reruns of House Hunters flashed on my tv. I think of myself in the summer, tanned skin, a vodka soda shy of reckless, with so much love in her heart. I even think of myself a year ago, when I first started writing here, how eager I was, how my spark felt rekindled. As much as I can try to replicate those times, they are far gone and it is as simple as that. I am myself of right now, in all her glory, in all her disarray. So what do I do now?
With January already making a dent in the new year, I wanted to spend more time being less afraid; being more human, in hopes that time can pass me by in a more natural way. Now, thirty days and change into the year, I’m beginning to see how blurred these lines have become. What is it about basic human experiences that become so daunting? Why am I so embarrassed to exist? I send one text message and suddenly my heart beats as though I’m being chased by a pack of wolves, like my life depends on it. Come on!! Of course hindsight is our mentor, but the present moment seems to be our destiny. The ricochet of these small disasters is exactly why I am too scared to move out. I’m a child cowering before her closet, but there are no monsters inside, only the ones of imagination, the what ifs and the nightmares. Yet, out of all of this nonsense, the most horrific part of it all is every bit of it, the embarrassment, the fear, the rejection, is exactly what it means to be human, to exist. A recipe that calls for sugar, a car that needs gas, a plant that needs water, there is no escaping the underbelly of humanness. I’m such a mess because I have been spending my time trying to dodge these feelings, when it can never work like that.
In my synthesis of time and existence, the two meet and diverge in unpredictable ways, but in order to make friends instead of enemies we must surrender to both. Because as we are now, won’t be how we always will be and that should be okay. More than okay if you will. Time shows us how much can change, but existing as we are shows us how we have the capabilities to evolve. Time as the water that erodes the rock of existing, time as the chisel that sculpts the statue of our being. Time goes on, as do you. Exist with freedom, let it be easy.
I'm glad to be back, I hope you are too,
nat <3
