It’s raining outdoors, the incensed sky is coming in the cracked window, raining heat onto my floor. I just finished a shift at my new job and it feels like I just woke, really, even though I just finished an eight hour shift. I’m getting goosebumps hearing the raindrops misting the tree outside, slapping the road with intensity, every drop sounding different from any other drop that hits around it. I hear blue jays calling to one another over the thunder, concerned with nothing and everything at the same time.
I’ve felt the same way for a while, aimless, just working then coming home and sleeping to do it again the next day. And again. And again. An endless cycle that puts food on the table and clothes on my back, but goddamn it I’m not made for a 9-5 40-hour work week that means nothing and betters no one, not even myself. Thankfully this new job gives me more than stability. It’s a purpose too, even though I have to seek it out, but the options are varied and SO SO BIG that I’m excited for the days to come again, finally. That, along with my own writing projects and some collaborations that will be a few months or a year in the making, and I’m feeling lighter again.
It’s not that I can’t work a 9-5, it’s not that I’m not willing to. I actually love working, and flourish when busy. It’s that I need something that will ignite me inside, in a way the last job simply never could. It’s never been enough for me to just “be” and mull around a life that is unremarkable. One where I benefit no one else has absolutely no appeal. Even if I despise humanity as a whole there are many people I care about and love, and to make their lives better, to inspire them to smirks and smiles and new experiences, and THAT is something I can be proud of. Even if I insist on keeping everyone at arm’s length (or six feet away). Yes, I want to benefit those I care about…but on MY terms.
There finally is some hope in what I do. It just took some time to get there, and fucking hell it felt like I was drowning for far too long. Months of anti-motivation and disappointment in myself has eaten away at the edges of my mind until it overwhelmed and it was everything I could do to keep treading water, knowing that eventually I’d touch shore again. And now I’m tiptoeing feeling the silty sand swish around my feet and I can breathe at the same time and I know which way to swim so I can find a sandbar to cling to, instead of drowning in everything washing my way.
These times aren’t easy for anyone. More and more I encounter people who say they want to leave the USA, because the country is “lost”. But it’s more than that. Having little computers in our pockets have connected us in ways humans have never encountered in their millennia of existence. We can instantly know what’s happening to friends on the other side of the planet, while we forget to connect to those in our own homes. Family dinners aren’t daily, they’re special occasions. We talk on screens to one another and forget how to make eye contact in person. Touching one another is an accident we apologize for, in passing, instead of sharing energy and intention, and touches hurt so badly we shrink away.
Is it any wonder we feel alone? Unheard even though we scream on social media? And I’m not talking about the solitude that we choose. We’ve only had cellular phones and computers around for a blip in time, not even 50 years for most of us, and yet they have invaded every facet of our lives. We are connected, yet we stay apart. We’ve found community yet we don’t feel a part of it. And I’m not referring only to the social distancing that the pandemic foisted upon us. It’s just made the disconnect even more visible, and we can’t escape it. It taints every kiss, every interaction we have with someone, every human is a potential death sentence, and even when we are able to be physically close to our families our minds are elsewhere, and not in the moment we share.
I don’t claim to have the answer because there’s no way it will be the same for every one of us. I don’t even have the answer for myself. The weight of the world has settled upon our shoulders and it’s crushing us as we struggle, not knowing what the world will look like in a month, or three months, or thirty.
The only time anything feels real and tangible is when I’m outdoors under the skies, the trees holding me from across the fields, my bare skin touching bare earth. There’s comfort in the vastness of reality, and I’m no longer my own little island, I’m the very water that flows around it, filling the landscape. Feeling the landscape. The NOW is what saved me two years ago when I got sober and the now is what I’m finding I’ve struggled against the most.
Life looks nothing like I thought it would this time last year. I was moving to Idaho with my wifey to have grand adventures and be in love and embrace difficult moments together because that’s what I needed, wanted, planned for. And now moments I didn’t even consider are my reality and I’m having to rebuild and I can make it look however I like. The hardest thing has been trying to figure out exactly what I want it to look like, and knowing it will be alone. Being alone doesn’t scare me. I prefer it. I just didn’t think I’d be making a life of my own again, starting anew.
So as it pours outside I sit here poring over what it is now, this life. I have my 6,000 mile companion, sweet void kitty Yuki, I have my chilly toes, and I have the rain. I have books and writing projects and poetry. I have people who love me and I have my son who would do anything to make me smile, and I have my now.
It’s enough.
A Burd in Flight 