The reflection of the sun off of wet streets and parking lots was blinding that morning two weeks ago. It had been extra humid when I awoke, so I was drowsy and still dreaming a little bit on the drive. As I struggled to keep my eyes open and concentrated on fabricating another excuse for why I was late (again), the unseasonably hot air and meaningless background music transported me, temporarily, to another place. It was an odd mix of nostalgia: sadness for what is no longer, mingled with happiness that I have, at least, a memory of that place.
That autumn, when I returned from Bretagne, she could sense my struggle and made me promise her that I wouldn't let the knowledge of that place become a haven more familiar in my mind than my own home. She instructed me to remember it fondly, but not allow France to become the standard against which I gauged the rest of the world - as my current locale would never compare.
A few months earlier, she had overcome similar fears but had no one to confide in. She said the journey to self-discovery is shadowed by fear and disappointment as one sees the world, reestablishes 'home' and decides daily to be freed and not oppressed by the knowledge of both self and others. I scribbled her words in the front of my journal and joined a band to channel some of that energy, but the habits I collected on my journey home made my voice hoarse. I was screaming into my pillow every night to block out the new voices. I was looking for a place to lay my head, because with my eyes open I could see things that had not been there before. As if victim to some hallucinogenic substance, I was able to experience more of life than I had in the previous years - and that ability, that experience, opened up the door to a world of dissatisfaction.
The last time I can remember feeling so alive, as if things made sense and I was exactly where I wanted to be, was the day we sat outside drinking gingerbread lattes with our English friends. It might have had something to do with the malapropos responsibility I had avoided in order to indulge in one such afternoon, but I felt free. I couldn't see the sun setting behind a sky full of charcoal colored clouds, but I knew the sun was setting. I knew what time it was, and I liked how it didn't matter. Christmas lights on timers awoke in the trees around us and, occasionally, a large drop of rain would fall on the shoulder of someone's sweater. We were laughing. The sky grew dark. We ordered more coffee.
The antithesis of moments like those occur often in months such as January and February. With little to look forward to and an overwhelming dread of many more weeks of grey skies, grey fields, dead trees and not-quite-cold-enough-to-freeze-the-streets weather, I find myself waking up a little less joyful and crawling into bed a little more sad.
I find every day a little more unsettling than the last.
On Saturdays, my desire to sleep in is often spoiled by associations with laziness and the socially ingrained idea that productivity = happiness. When I shake off those ghosts from my past and sleep late anyway, I wake up feeling worse than I would if I were greatly fatigued, because the guilt of self-indulgence enters my conscience the moment I open my eyes, leading to an even LESS productive day full of self-loathing.
But on mornings like the day we had tornadoes, with nearly eighty degree weather and the secret hope that my missing trait of punctuality might sabotage my career and be the very thing that frees me to live my life, I am reminded of how it feels to be at peace. I remember that that sense of elevation would not be known if I lacked the sometimes misdiagnosed element of sadness, discontent, depression.
It was 1987. I was probably wearing a jumper with that navy cardigan and penny loafers. It couldn't have been later than three or four in the afternoon, but it seemed so dark as I turned the corner of the staircase. There were seventeen steps in all. I stopped in the middle of my descent to the living room and tried swallowing the lump in my esophagus. It hurt. Everything hurt, from the inside out. I felt empty, guilty, sad - and I drew immediate explanations from my personal four-year-old life as to why I was suffering for no apparent reason. The majority of my life, I have continued to search for the cause when things become inexplicably dark; often, my search propels me to dig up some unconfessed sin, that I might be released, and when the excavation finds nothing worthy of such oppression, I feel as if I have not searched hard enough.
I wonder in these dark times, "what is it that I am looking for?"
And there are other times when, without explanation, my happy emotions will so contrast the sad ones that I wonder how I could have ever been so low. We were leaning against a stone wall at the metro station, waiting, and I couldn't stop smiling and I thought, "if this is what life is, I haven't been living." I don't think he knew the way he lifted me, but I didn't bother explaining; and as we took our seats inside the weathered train car, he mentioned insecurity being his only issue. I thought, "he has no idea," and clenched my jaw in anticipation of days without sun, days when my own worthlessness will rain so heavily that he might get wet, too.
The relentless highs and lows that grip and stretch and fling me effect not only me, but overflow into my relationships. I was inadvertently reminded again that night that a person cannot know me without knowing both extremes: he told me that the eminence of being my friend is no parallel to the sheer agony therein, and that it has to end.
That was when the storm began. The day, which began unreasonably sunny and warm turned cold, icy. As soon as the hail stopped, the tornado sirens began, but he went out in it anyway. I sat alone on my couch, wanting to cry - wanting somehow for my emotions to come tumbling out as tumultuously as his. The weather was mocking me. Lighting. Thunder. Storms. I think I felt worse for not feeling bad enough than for ruining another friendship. I knew I had the emotions in there, somewhere. I tried to dig them up, but continued to feel so unsettled.
Last night, in two different conversations, they tried offering various explanations. One said, "This is your defense mechanism," and comforted me in the idea that I'm perhaps not so abnormal. The other related, saying, "it isn't that things are wrong - things just don't feel right. I'm unsettled, too."
This morning, I overslept (again). There was a sharp pain in both eyes as I battled my eyelids in the fight to force light into my pupils. The sun was shining in through my sheer curtain the way it shines in the summer - warm and abrasive. Before cursing at my faulty alarm clock or grumbling at the sun for being too bright, I made one decision.
It is the inability to settle which drives me in life. In fact, the times I feel unsettled are the times when I am, indeed, settling. At approximately 7:21 a.m., I realized that the things which will add to the quality of my life are not the things my parents and peers deem important. Someone else - maybe someone more content with the comfort of 8-5 and the consistency of a routine - that person is a better fit for this life. For nearly twenty years, I have realized the importance of viewing life as a terminally ill cancer patient would (although I have never been a terminally ill cancer patient): time is running out.
Sometimes, I think, my heart beats faster than it should. I pick at my cuticles and my right leg shakes. I clench my jaw, grind my teeth, forget to breathe - I am anxious, not because I'm discontent, but because being settled in just doesn't feel right. Actually, the big fluffy couch makes my back hurt, and I'd rather be sitting in a plastic airport chair in some third world country. I like to keep my shoes on and a bag packed, just in case. Empty water bottles make me nervous and every time I hang another picture on the wall and feel more moved-in, I find that settling is the most unsettling thing I can do.
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