The picture on my calendar for September is a woman standing in what looks like sandy brown abyss of Arizona with a fork in the road in front of her, the writing reads “I choose my own path.”
For August, it read, “you won’t be lost at sea forever.”
I clung to that affirmation. It would be the last thing I would read before I left my bedroom each day. This feeling of lostness, emptiness, anger, lack of emotional regulation, it won’t exist forever. It can’t.
During my birthday trip, I was on a boat laying on a hammock net kind of thing that allows me to feel the ocean water splash on me as the boat speeds to a nearby island. My best friend was siting next to me. My cousin on the other side of me. The sun beaming down on me. All I could feel inside me, around me, radiating from me was love. It’s not till now that I’ve realized that literally being in the middle of the Caribbean sea was where I found peace. Where I no longer felt lost but felt love being poured into me as I did to them.
I remember looking at my best friend and very shortly explaining the love I felt and she understood what I meant despite my simple explanation. However, Helly Shah was able to put it all into words. My favorite line though, “My girlfriends raised me.”
If you have girlfriends, then you know. We raised each other. We sat in each others’ rooms and tried to unpack the big feelings that came with puberty despite having no guide other than what we read in young adult novels, eavesdropped, watched on the L Word. We moved away and kept talking, kept growing, kept loving. Kept saying we are forever, I will never leave you.
At midnight, as I went from 30 to 31. I sobbed on the beach alone. Looking out at the ocean. I screamed. I didn’t know how I made it through the year and I’m still so angry that I’m still so angry. Then my best friend and my cousin got out of the car and hugged me on each side. They had just met but we group hugged like we had been the three besties for as long as possible. As I cried, they commented on the moon and the gorgeous house in the mountain. It made me laugh. Despite my grief, life went on. I was forced to keep waking up, going to work, to survive under the weight of the capitalism. And on the beach, despite my grief, the people I loved found a way to make me giggle and splash my feet in the water.
Last month, I decided that I would run a mile on the first of the month for every month for forever, I guess? I recall that I beasted last month’s mile but then crashed towards the finish and ended up with a less than ideal time. I was so frustrated. This month, I decided I would go hard but ultimately, absolutely no walking even if that meant pacing myself better. What’s the goal of all this? I’m not quite sure. I want to be faster than each month before but why? It’s not like I’m working any towards of specific mileage goal.
I think that is part of what is building my anxiety and anger. I don’t know where to go from here. I’m not that particularly interested in throwing all of my energy into my career but it is the one thing I have. I have my writing too but it doesn’t provide the same focus that I used to have for things. My lostness of not knowing what I’m working towards…it’s confusing, infuriating. And now here I am, at what feels like crossroads, needing to choose a path. But which path and for what? For why?
I could live the rest of my life like this forever. Would be enough? As always, I defer to Quinnie: What if I never scratched another itch for the rest of my life? / Would I die satisfied knowing it could always get better than this?
A friend and I were discussing an acquaintance that lives a life that we perceive as pure exhaustion. Then this acquaintance said, “I’m living the life I deserve.” And I cannot get that out of my head. It’s the most beautiful affirmation, mantra, manifestation I’ve ever heard. To truly feel that you are living the life you deserve in a positive sense…isn’t that what we are all working towards?
I used to love the movie Brittany Runs a Marathon because it felt so akin to my own life trajectory. But then I started to really hate the ending where she decides not to date the guy and stay friends. It made no sense to me because I’ve always wanted the guy. And they were such a good match!
Well here I sit with options and I can’t date. I can’t make a decision. I can’t do any of it because I’m angry and sad. Most importantly, I want to live the life I deserve. I deserve to live the life I deserve? Right now, it feels like something I need to figure out on my own (and most obviously, with the help and love of my girlfriends).