People are always waiting.
Waiting for the sun to rise again over mountains on the horizon. Waiting for sleep to consume troubled thoughts on lonely nights. Waiting for a phone call, for the alarm clock to go off, for the microwave to reach zero, for school to start, for school to end, for paychecks, for summer, for spring, for love.
Waiting, waiting, waiting.
Our lives are the night sky: filled with so much black and empty space – the endless waiting – and the little pinpricks of twinkling light, representing the anti-climatic moment of the finality of reaching what you've been waiting for. Only to continue on past that one fleeting moment to float around in the darkness; waiting once again for something to happen.
There are so many missed opportunities because we concern ourselves not on keeping our eyes focused on the road in front of us, but the destination in the future. In doing so, we miss all of the beauty, and life that surrounds us.
This is perhaps one of my greatest faults; I do this that I may always have something to look forward to – keep me pressing on when life gets hard. How can I give up if Halloween is just around the corner? Or piles of crunchy leaves? The first snowfall? The smell of Christmas? The sound of rain?
If I always keep my eyes so far into the future, then maybe I wont need to face the present. I wont need to confront the frightening realization that the reason I am not happy is because I am sitting at a bus stop waiting for the opportunities to come; rather than running to the bus station, stealing the keys, and driving that freaking opportunity bus to who knows where – to create my own adventure. I have gotten comfortable with being comfortable.
And that isn't me.
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I woke up very early a few days back. I had this terrible unquenchable ache to run. Not the, "Oh gosh, I shouldn't have had so many carbs yesterday," kind of run. No, this was a sheer tidal wave of panic; my soul was demanding for me to do something so inherently ME, that I couldn't get out the door fast enough. Hair still damp from the shower I had taken the night before, my face bare, and with one limb still flailing to get into the other arm of my jacket, I ran quickly down the steps of my apartment and into the open air.
It was still dark outside, the sky glowing with a mere hint of morning light. The panic was building, and I ran faster, and faster; my feet followed only a memory of a place I had once gone to pick dandelions, sage, and lavender to dry for my medicines. I fell while climbing over the old wooden fence, scraping up my hands. I ran through the trees, pushing the branches out of my path and hearing them snap back behind me. The silence and peace of the dawning day was broken by the sound of alarmed birds as they took off in flight, my own heavy near-hyperventilated breathing, running sneakers, and an irregular pounding heart.
I kept running, and running, and running.
When the panic had been somewhat subdued, I defeatedly crawled between bushes and made myself as small as I possibly could. The screaming in my mind had been quieted to nothing but soft, dejected sobs.
What had happened to me? The things that I had always needed in life to be happy were simple:
1. The sound of the wind in the trees.
2. The smell of the air in a thunderstorm.
3. Timeless romance – whether to satisfy this need with the constant romanticistic narration in my mind, or in my current life story was irrelevant. As long as that need was met.
4. To be needed.
5. Sunsets. Always sunsets.
6. God.
I kept asking myself why. WHY was it that I had to grow up? That this list had changed to:
1. Paying the bills on time.
2. Having and keeping a job, where you do very little, and are easily replaceable.
3. Waking up – which was something I no longer looked forward to.
4. Being taken for granted.
5. God.
6. And sometimes – if I was lucky enough to catch one – a sunset.
Things used to be so easy. So simple.
I just want to cry, and scream, and kick the ground as I throw the most childish of any tantrum as I weep for the unfairness of it all.
My Dad would always say, "you'll understand better when you get older," in response to all of the questions that I would ask. But he lied. Everyone lied. I don't understand better. It only gets more confusing, and more complicated.
I was so angry. Because when I had finally felt what love was, it wasn't what I had always imagined it to be. My story of love had not been written the way that I had always wanted it to be, and it had become a nightmare rather than a fairytale. Because when I had finally had the opportunity to live my life without the shackles of this perception of this ignorant child, it wasn't the adventure I had always believed it would be; it was a doorless, windowless prison.
I realized that my whole life I had become so caught up in my own world, that I truly, and honestly believed that a fairytale life was more than possible. It was mine for the taking. But it had never been that way, and so I cant conceive as to why I would have believed it to be.
These things I had running through my head as I allowed the despair to consume me. With the agony of a broken heart in mourning of lost dreams, my heart cried out to God. To be perfectly honest, I don't even think that any words were formed. I just remember reaching out to him, my soul in utter torment.
I was suddenly aware that the sound of my muffled whimpers had stopped, and my panic, fear, and anger had disappeared entirely like it was never there. I opened my eyes, and was blanketed in a peace, and a relief and it was as if I was waking from a terrible nightmare. Completely calm, I sat quietly. Listening to the sounds only the early morning can bring. The thought came into my head, and I knew it to be absolutely true.
God loved me. This I knew, and had always known. He had created me, with my self proclaimed imperfections and all. If he had created me to be such a wild spirit, to have such an incredible imagination, an absolute raw power for creation, the passionate desire for true love only found in fairytales, and the essential need for utter freedom; would he really create this soul only to trap it here on this planet without the means for fulfilling those necessities?
No.
I stood up, wiped my eyes and shook the leaves out of my hair and began to walk home.
I have a future ahead of me. I cant afford to wait for it anymore – I need to pack a bag of the sound of wind, the smell of rain, sunsets, Jane Austen (she will do for now). God, and people that need me – and find it.
You are the books you read, the films you watch, the music you listen to, the people you meet, the dreams you have, the conversation you engage in. You are what you take from these. You are the sound of the ocean, the breath of fresh air, the brightest light and the darkest corner. You are a collective of every experience you have had in your life. You are every single second of every single day.
So drown yourself in a sea of knowledge and existence while you still can. Let the words run through your veins and let the colors fill your mind until there is nothing left to do but explode in a shower of beauty.
There are no wrong answers.
Inspiration is everywhere.
Sit back, relax, and take it all in.
Now go out and create something.
~C
