and others may live their lives “better–but not with my peculiar flavor and music.” this is my lot and i’ll be damned if i don’t figure it out. and frankly i’d like to see how it all plays out. which is to say, i’m invested in the story. i’m invested in the story of my own life. which, i think, is not a bad place to be at twenty-seven.
i used to think the not knowing was the worst bit. the great gaping unknown–an endlessly terrifying thing. but i’m starting to realize it’s actually quite thrilling. it’s actually, absolutely, the best bit. there is so much to look forward to, so much still to do. i have yet to live that night on which i’ll meet the man i marry. yet to get my first piece published. yet to give birth or buy a house or figure out non-oblique answers to all those damn questions. there are so many firsts still ahead of me. and what a blessing–what a particularly exciting thing about standing on this side of that invisible line.
what i’m just now coming to realize is that the difference between the terror and the thrill–that razor-edge that separates the two, is faith.
i remember sending up a particularly vociferous prayer towards the start of the year, which wasn’t so much a prayer as a demand, what do you want from me? what do you want from me? six words i said again and again. six words i angrily flung upward. and the answer came back immediate and clear: more faith.
more faith.
which at the time i thought meant more patience, and patience has never been my virtue.
but now, these many months later, i don’t think it is patience. it’s not about more patience or less patience. it’s about a seed of self-belief. and how that seed is actually a divine thing. it’s about embracing the bits that don’t make any sense. trusting that the story is in fact made by the departures and aberrations. it’s about wonder and curiosity. about moving forward and upward even if the movement is a sort of graceless thrashing about. it’s about clawing and clamoring and dirt beneath the fingernails. it’s about saying i don’t know. and i don’t know. and i don’t know, again. because one day i will. and if one believes that in the end it’ll all work out–even and most especially in the face of overwhelming doubt–than those moments of discomfort and unease and fear are made sweet and holy and wholly lovely by their impermanence.
more faith.
hell.
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