I think it happened somewhere amidst standing over the kitchen counter in the dark, eating cold spaghetti from a glad-ware container at 1 o'clock in the morning. Maybe that was the moment. The moment being the precise collection of seconds in which I realized the all together precarious and ridiculous state of my life. Somewhere in between the rapture of tomato and basil came this flash of images- pictures of me and my life and the people so colorfully populating it. And we were swimming, or rather floating. These tiny caricatures in my head attempting simply to stay afloat and failing to grasp at anything concrete.
Void of all stability.
Tempting fate and a drowning demise.
Here I stood, in my parent's kitchen, in a house that no longer felt like my own, eating cold spaghetti in the dark. It was all I could do to take this sharply close look at my life... at the very real and bizarre circumstance in which I now found myself. All I could see was a young woman, seemingly accomplished and of various interest and skill, yet completely and utterly lost in the immensity. The immensity of life and the universe and all its divine, cosmic and fate driven notions was holding me hostage. And for the first recognizable time in my life I couldn't uncover the strength to fight the immensity back. All I could see was this reflection of someone I didn't even know.
And I feel like I should have cried. As a highly emotional individual- one who sobs at Hallmark commercials and hot dog advertisements- all signs point to my inevitable tear shed. And yet, nothing. I felt as though I should have cried like a young girl learning the fictional reality of her beloved Santa Claus, or a 15 year old experiencing heartbreak for the first time. Nothing. I would have even settled for an outburst of obscenity or a rush of inappropriate laughter. I was in fact, so remarkably unprepared for what occurred next. I simply stood staring at a tiny crack in the hardwood floor. Perhaps a tomato and basil induced coma had set in leaving little to no room for an intensely emotional reaction. So I simply stood there for another good 30 seconds before putting the blue plastic lid back on my mother's spaghetti and went to my room.
...A man once told me that you can bloom where you're planted. We stood in front of a wall of cheese I was so expertly mongering at Trader Joe's when he said to me, "You can bloom where you're planted." I suppose this is a fact perhaps one comes to terms with later in life, once you've moved away from a place or seen the edge of something new. And upon returning to that place where you began you find that you could have stayed there all along. You could have grown into something or someone of just as much substance and interest. You can bloom where you're planted.
But then I think that I could just spend a lifetime floating... through space and time, between oceans and continents and cups of coffee, hiking paths and perfectly delicious kisses, old pairs of sweatpants and borrowed boyfriend t-shirts, dance studios, yoga studios, black and white photographs, endless Sunday mornings and farmer's markets, fresh peaches, hand holding, long distant phone calls and laughter, art, cardboard boxes, audrey hepburn films, and moments that pull you back into your body while simultaneously tossing you out into other dimensions and worlds and colors... I want to believe that I can bloom where I've been planted. But not yet. I am far too close to the drowning demise of an over watered houseplant or the perfect sunflower caught in an April monsoon. Perhaps this man forgot to also mention that one too can bloom where you're uprooted and re-planted. Or maybe said plant may live in a beautifully crafted pot allowing it to move and live in all kinds of homes and landscapes before being settled back into solid earth. Perhaps we can master this simultaneous planting and floating to offer room for adventure and discovery while still being at home in the world?
They don't teach you that in college. They don't teach you that anywhere really... how to be at home in the world. It's like one day you wake up and realize that you're living a life you never thought you would ever possibly be living. Leaving all judgement out of the equation, it's just that you never imagined your life would look as it does. And no one ever told you how to make the transition from perpetual student and academic artist to real life person. And not to say that anyone was supposed to. But, how can you make this transition into figuring out who you really are and what you really want when essentially, nothing in your life up until this point has actually prepared you for making such decisions. Maybe all before this was fallacy. Maybe we were all just playing at pretend hoping that when reality set in we just wouldn't notice?
At least I may take tiny comfort in knowing that for as long as I've been alive, my mother's spaghetti has always been delicious. This is a fact in which I hold complete faith and know will forever be truth. Especially cold... at 1 o'clock in the morning.
Currently seeking out other small comforts to make it through another week.
I promise it won't be so long between posts next time.
-L
