Every time I watch the snow flurry in front of my car’s headlights, I get a little closer to being who I want to be.
Someone who is hopelessly, completely, utterly happy with her life.
I’ve never lived through a January that isn’t void of will, but I think this year has changed that. January through March, iconically and chronically depressing, until now, hopefully. An old version of me prophesied that once I could drive away from here, I’d be just fine. Once I could play my music as loud as I wanted, choose to breathe air wherever I wanted, and take the scenic route whenever I could, I would be fine. By some miracle, I was right.
Driving through the snow isn’t as scary as I thought, though.
It’s the other stuff.
Stuff like college, like friends, like being good enough. Everything consists of some stress, some factor of failure that endures through every success. Day after day, I am tasked with finding all the loose ends and making knot after knot, tying until my fingers bleed, in a futile attempt to pull myself together, just to do it again.
Somehow, everything is bittersweet; I am tingeing all of my days with the gray of being lost. It’s subconscious, but I am the only one at fault. Placing blame leaves me lonely. I don’t know how to shake the feeling that everything good is waiting to come to a halt.
There I go again, contradicting myself to no end. I know that I’m fine, and I know that every day is generally lived with love. But I’m drifting away from the part of me that knows how to explain that.
Every time I try to finish this column, I am stopped. I am void of the words I used to know by heart, void of the rhythm that my fingers used to drum in my sleep.
I believe it’s because I’m here, and I used to be there.
I used to be waiting for this, longing for this, writing to kill my time, to kill the empty space between where I was and where I am. Writing to push down my hopeful attitude and belittle its clutch.
Then, I let myself hope again, and I let myself be here instead of there, and through being content, I lost the inexplicable lethargy that once drove my thoughts to paper. Maybe it’ll come back in the spring, rise with the sun, and bring me back to the girl I keep pretending I still am.
But it seems unlikely. I stand by the fact that I feel more prose flowing through my fingertips when the snow falls than at any other time, but all of this cold energy is being wasted on my complete inability to write anything good enough.
Every time I watch the snow flurry in front of me, I get a little closer to being sure that I am exactly where I’m meant to be and exactly who I’m meant to be.
Someone who is hopelessly, completely, utterly happy with her life.
So, why do I feel hopelessly, completely, utterly lost?
