What is the deal with life, man? A lot of it doesn't make any sense. Until sometimes I look back and everything makes hilariously, ridiculously, unexpectedly perfect sense. Though I can never see it when I'm actually in it. Like now. They always gloss over this part in movies. Everyone wants to see the before and after, but everything in between is reduced to a 2 minute montage set to an emotionally evocative soundtrack. Sometimes I wish I could fast forward over these times myself so I could get to the good stuff. But it's here amidst the hard stuff where the real transformation occurs. It's the process of going through all that and putting in the necessary effort that leads to the good stuff.
Whenever I've reached a point where I didn't know what to do next, I did the thing I was most afraid to do. That's how I ended up leaving grad school, taking a totally random job at this weird and crazy and amazing place, moving in with the strangers who would become my roommates for several years, buying a house, running a marathon (and meeting some kick ass people along the way), letting go of something that was good but not great, falling in love - so basically, all the very best things I've done. So now I'm facing my current fears. That of being alone (and trying to believe that being single doesn't imply that I'm horribly ugly or fundamentally unlovable or fated to die alone). And that of putting myself out there and being open to whatever happens, despite a very real risk of failure, rejection or heartache.
So if my life were a movie, the montage would look something like this: taking a road trip to visit Emelyn and Jeff in Pittsburgh, playing mini-golf and eating ice cream, walking through Highland Park, sitting in coffee shops reading (where elderly people shake my hand and tell me they like my sandals when I hold the door open for them or they ask me to watch their purse while they go to the bathroom. Evidently I am a hit with the AARP crowd), going kayaking (and getting hissed at by angry swans), reading, going to the gym, listening to Bill's "pep talks" (as he keeps coming in to my office to hand me random $10 and $20 bills and saying "I just want things to go well for you, kid" and bringing me 2 bike locks and half a dozen slips of paper with combinations written on them and asking me which combination goes with which lock), going on a family trip to visit TJ in Boston. And I think probably Aimee Mann's 'Today's the Day' or Rachel Yamagata's 'Reason Why' would be playing in the background.
But still, President of Life or Fate/Destiny or whoever you are, maybe you could see it in your heart to send me a little clue, or a bit of help or some kind of sign pointing me in the right direction. Or one of those moments that changes my whole life for the better, only I don't know it at the time. Or maybe just enough hugs and cookies to get me wherever it is I'm supposed to be.
From Robot, with love.
Lyric of the moment: "I've been trying to do it right. I've been living a lonely life. I've been sleeping here instead. I've been sleeping in my bed. So show me family. All the blood that I would bleed. I don't know where I belong. I don't know where I went wrong. But I can write a song..."
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