Tuesday, August 19, 2014

sin alma

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”
― Søren Kierkegaard



I've been unusually quiet. Tentative would be a better word. Things have been falling into my lap, cards are being dealt. The responsibilities that come with aging have begun to slowly pile up around me. I pay my credit cards, my bills, the loans. I think about someday owning a house. I keep my name on paper to a minimum. And yet, here I am still working for someone else's company sitting at a desk where someone else sat before me. I have been, and still am, directionless.



My boss tends to spend her lunches talking to us about the body, the soul...repetition - that some souls are only here to repeat a lesson they have failed before and only after they learn from it are they free to move on. It makes me wonder what my "lesson" is or if I'm just meant to stay in a constant state of limbo. All my life I've felt like an outsider looking in - not ever quite feeling at ease or at home in any place, but more like a perpetual tourist. I feel, and have felt for a long time, distinctly alienated from so many people around me - as if, sometimes, I'm not quite even sure I belong here with them. Here.


Such simple words make less sense to me these days - I, you, we, it, here, now, then. Each carries multitudes of definitions - layers of reconciliation, negotiation, discovery, experience, confidence, certainty spread into one syllable. But I've given my mind too much free reign that it's hard to accept small gestures for what they are without attaching a psychological explanation to them. I've grown stubborn in my ways and increasingly feeble as a result. I am unable to see things simply, instead I've grown simply accustomed to simplification. In fact, it's become increasingly difficult to envision myself not feeling or thinking this way because it's all I've ever known.
 
 
My reality has always been mental. I'm just not that convinced anymore that it will ever be anything else.


1 comment:

  1. This is so beautifully written, really it's brilliant. I often feel the same way.

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