Something has been happening lately. Over the past few months I have been on this roller-coaster of ups and downs that's just been taking me in steady circles. According to hundreds of novels, movies, parents, and psychology professors, I'm just a student who is about to graduate from college. Right?
But honestly, I think the problem really roots itself in the fact that I have a hard time believing people when they tell me that I can do whatever I want. It society today, that seems so untrue. Everyone around me is constantly being limited and restricted, and whatever it is that we want to do sort of gets lost in the translation of just trying to make it work. Trying to get to wherever we want to go. Trying to be whatever we need to be in order to go further. Until we all end up confused as hell as to how the fuck we got to wherever we are standing.
I guess sometimes you've just got to take a step backward and ask yourself what you've really got control over. Honest control, where you determine the exact outcome, which truly turns out to be whatever you saw it becoming. And it's almost nothing, isn't it? The choices we make can only take us so far, because whether or not we like it, we were created to coexist and so much of the shit that's going to happen to me is really going to depend on you guys and the people I surround myself with and billions of people I'll never even pass on the street.
So can I do whatever I want? I'm not really sure yet. I'm still trying to figure that out. I want to do what I want to do, and I want to do it in a way that pushes my limits without forfeiting my goals. Somedays I get the feeling that the reality of the situation is pretty damn grim, and then somedays, like today, I get this overwhelming sense that I'm going to find a way to make it work. There are so many ways to be happy and so many places you can find comfort or strength or humor or awe, and as long as I don't lose that, then I think a change is going to be okay. Something's terrible, but there will be something else around to cancel it out.
As for the rest of it, it's got to come in stride because whether I appreciate it or not, things are going to play themselves out. I had a really fucking shitty day a few days back, but because that day was shitty, today was better. And I think I'm starting to understand that everything is relative and the only way we can feel anything at all is through comparison and experience. I like that, because it gives me this feeling that whatever is happening to me at this point in my life is going to be important someday.
I spoke with my mom a fews days back about wanting to break down and cry one minute and feeling overwhelming excitement the next, and she told me that things were happening. That I needed to pay attention. And then it hit me - I think I'm growing up. I haven't felt like this, probably ever, and it's pretty damn strange. And when I told her this she thought for a minute and told me that I didn't have to be ready, and I didn't have to be prepared, but I had to be open to whatever was coming. And so that's what I'm going to try to do. To let things inside, to let them affect me, and to submerse myself into this supposed transition.
In this life there are no rules, and there are no honest definitions. This is why we’ve got to learn to create our own.
You can’t let yourself feel terrible forever because of something that happened in October. You can't live in a rut and call that a life. You can't put others around you before yourself all the time and think that counts as love. You can't let yourself be terrified that you're going to amount to nothing at all, or hide from the good things because it hurts so much when they go away. Because in the end, everything that happens happened, and that is enough. You can face it a false smile, or a breath of youthful excitement. You can allow yourself to cry, smoke too much pot, shut everything out. Or you can accept the fact that whatever happened came and went in this life where nothing, good nor evil, lasts forever. And you can take it with you, knowing that no matter what, this is life, and it doesn’t stand still for anybody. The world may slow down, but it won't stop. Cruelly yet fairly, ever so beautifully, the sun will rise in the morning and it will set that night.
Tomorrow I might wake up terrified again. But for now, at least, all I can see is the good. Maybe the world is fucked, but we’re all still here. We are all still living life, alive and breathing, and in the end it’s those inhales and exhales that keep us ahead, keep us waking up in the morning; kissing, fighting, dreaming, sighing, laughing, playing, drinking, crying. If we can keep track of the in and out of the most important resource on earth, I think we might actually end up okay.
So for now, that is what I know, and for now, it may just be enough.
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