A goal – a mindset – the lilt of his laugh. All things that evolve are sickening when you are the one that revolves around them staying put. The nausea of having your only known solidarity shift under your feet can have authority over your nervous system, your gag reflex and your sense of sanity. You ask yourself why you ever got in the boat if you cannot handle the sea.
Because whether it’s the boat or the water, what wobbles under half-tied shoes is not much more than the assumption that it was going to keep you safe. Perhaps I’m prone to being seasick.
You sway; you fall. That initial wobble is enough for some to never get up again. Things that are stuck, shall not be swayed. And that which sways can be lifted. Through a blur of tears as salty as what has me fallen, I’ll lift myself back up. That up and down is a fact of living, and it’s taken me 21 years to realise I am not less for losing my footing. I am not less for undermining how temporary stability is in the hands of something ever-changing.
In complete truth, I have thought before that there was something wrong with me. Maybe I drink too much and it’s affected how I operate, maybe my ADHD really does hinder me and how I gather information, or maybe I’m just not as intelligent as I thought.
I feel like when I was younger, a teenager, I was far more in tune with what I would not stand for when dealing with people or tricky situations. But now I realise I dealt my cards over a brick wall. I realise I had a far simpler life because I refused to live it fully – the pessimist in the form of a teenage girl who looked like me, who knew little of proper connection, conflict and resolve, and even littler about herself, or what a life was to be lived.
And so, looking back, I’ve felt silly for not working things out as quick as I might’ve, for not seeing at the time what I know now.
What a thing it is to mourn wasted time. And what a thing it is to belittle the work you’ve done which has you wobbling – knowing that others are happier for not having done anything at all. I do what is hard so I may enjoy the easy, instead of just expecting it.
That’s when I noticed the shift that was my outlook. I sway and I fall because I am no longer stuck. Because I allow opportunity for myself to be disappointed, with wide open arms – there’s nothing better than finding your someone or something that never lets you down when given the opportunity to do so.
Maybe, all those years ago, I thought I deserved to live in the grey of pessimism and distrust, or maybe now I think I deserve better – I prefer the thought of the latter. A change of mindset.
Light will always shine through stained-glass differently, all you have to do is notice it through layers of experience and connection and colour. Question your norm, your former and current mindsets, and the life you’re living. Question what that is, because it’s changing – and the tides are too.
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