still, start
Mood: Flume - Bon Iver (there’s something about the rocking horse & tiny piano that gets me today)
I’m not sure where March or April have gone. I had bigger plans than I’ve accomplished in these sixty-ish days. Had more things to say than I’ve said. My schedule has slowly edged back to what it was before the pandemic & the strange settling in my gut tells me that I’m not so happy with those edges. I want to be lost to the world & somehow still get paid for it. Or at least keep my apartment. Anyway.
This morning was an experience in false starts, in that I dozed in & out, over & again, until I decided I could not put off going into the office any longer. & then when I did, I found myself locked out, my boss nowhere to be found. With nothing to be done for the moment, I headed back home again & stared at nothing, in relief.
Today I’m struck with the realization that I want to be on the other side of thirty already. After waking this morning, my partner propped my head against his side & soothed all the words I had out of my mind. I told him how I’d mistakenly aged him as thirty-four to my coworkers, giving him an extra year. How the first mistake was a dam breaking. Now thirty-four was inescapable & ever-looming & how did he feel about that, huh? As he is not me, he simply shrugged. Said something unshakeable in that way that he does when I am being ridiculous & he’s calmly amused about it.
It isn’t thirty or even the idea of thirty. I just want time to move. As much as this worldwide quarantine has taught me that time is a faulty construct, I want to demand things of it anyway. I wonder if it’s my middle child syndrome at play. Thirty means I’m farther away from the middle of whatever I’m in right now. It means I’m at the end of my degree, at the beginning of a new one. Starting a career. Planning a move up north. Maybe none of this will happen. I make a lot of plans that I shouldn’t. But there’s a certain level of nostalgia or grief that’s easy for me to wear. Stops & starts are like that for me, like grief or the soft memory of it. I want to remember right now without having to exist in it. That’s the thing. I want to be the better version of me already, assuming I continue to bloom toward what keeps me alive. Part of that, I know, is learning how to find pleasure in each random Tuesday & roll through the wreckage of a false start Friday. I want to be someone who can hold space, stand still for the days. Live in them. I really do want to watch the sun rise & not wait for the next one. I promise, I promise I do.
