It's hard to think of things as either ending or beginning when it feels constantly in flux.
It.
As if "it" itself is even capable of being properly defined instead of the gray mess it is -- constantly exploding, imploding, heaving waves of toxicity with every weekend tremor.
I tune it out. I've grown numb. After everything. After all of this. I stand knee deep in the ocean. I let the waves wash over. I resist. I tell myself I am resilient. I'm still standing.
Aren't I?
I've spent a lot of time driving this year - going back and forth between states, crossing lines, fumbling forward into wayward plans. Standing on new dirt, walking across the old. Getting on plains, going upstate in trains. Yet my favorite place was walking outside the cabin in Vermont, feeling like I had never felt so much immense blackness envelope me and being able to look up and see the stars shimmer and glow. And yet while I was incredibly afraid to stand there alone petrified of the surrounding woods, it was exhilarating to feel so insignificant. A glimmer of freedom.
I've been in a strange place the past few months, While other things have fallen into place, other things have fallen apart. It's been a source of internal conflict trying to figure out what is worth repairing and what should be discarded. Should I just be alone? I wrestle so much with this question sometimes because I've always felt incapable of being loved and it's hard for me to imagine someone having the patience, the fortitude, the solidarity and the compassion to sustain "love" for someone like me - careless, independent, selfish, and so stubborn. Conversely, I think I may just be trying to shirk responsibility that much longer by shying away from commitment. Of any kind. Mid-life crisis. That sense of panic that ends up manifesting itself in a red convertible and a woman twenty years younger.
Because I'm getting older.
The world is moving on with or without me too fast and maybe I'm just trying to see who will still be there at the end, who will wait it out for me. If there is a "who". It might just be me in the end. Still standing. Still in knee deep. For better or worse.
.
.
