Finals week meditation

I get my daily dose of wisdom from the sky; we have a pretty good relationship. The clouds tell me everything I need to know. I make up the rest as I go.

I live in a room with one window, and I keep the blinds shut so that neighbors can't see what I'm up to. Would they understand why I pace around so much? I haven't been listening or trying to understand lately. I let my circumstances trample over my identity. I felt empty, thin, tattered. A plastic grocery bag twisted around a winter-stripped tree branch.

I sit. I breathe in, deeply. Until my lungs feel elastic-y. I think about all of the ways the color lavender appears in my life, in different shades. I forget there is no One Shade of lavender. I forget that life doesn't abide by rules and conjugations, and meaning can't be laid out for us in a table drawn in pencil between college ruled margins.

I smile because life is chaos, and my worldview is fragile enough for the amount of clutter creating static in my bedroom to change everything. I smile because the key is making the prettiest connections, which isn't hard to do once you start actively noticing things. I smile because I exist in a physical form, fuzzy thighs, fuzzy neck, fuzzy back, fuzzy tummy.

You lose the ability to appreciate detail when you're preoccupied with other things, like seeking the imaginary approval of other human beings (how did I get to the point of having to remind myself that social media is not real life) or trying not to flunk out of college (I just got a 105 on my rhetoric final so maybe this one is exaggerated). I've cried a lot of empty tears spawned from imaginary anxieties. Zealous feeling hits a dead end. Half of my favorite freckle stretches into a scar.

I am not defined by how well I fit into a paradigm of human experience. I am my tiny Nickelodeon-splat toes (too poorly circulated to wear flip flops in the summertime), involuntarily squealing at the sight of cute animals, my favorite paintings in the MFA, trusting the knowledge that nothing is wrong with my experience for being exactly what it is.

I am okay, I am okay, I am okay

December 1st

I cannot remember when I revoked my own permission to exist poetically: when did I decide I had to stuff my being into a linear narrative; that it was not important to find meaning and beauty in little details? (Only to take this meaning and beauty for granted as I lost touch with what mattered most to me)

When I stigmatized my own experiences, did I anticipate the extent to which my future self would be tormented by discomfort and unknowing? Why is this happening to me, after all? Of what consequence is sitting in a corner seat on an orange line train car flecked with decay for thirty minutes every Friday at the cusp of afternoon to pay a stranger to listen to me talk about everything I wouldn't have to talk about if I just took the time to sit and write it all down?

It will all be okay with some bright lipstick and lung-deflating hugs and takeout burritos, not necessarily in that order and omitting consideration of cold sores brought on by intrusive thoughts and 12-page-papers; uncomfortable attempts at amity and train schedules that don't line up with our plans; frosty first-of-December fingertips and stolen debit card numbers.

I think I'm getting there, slowly, one burst of realization at a time. Moving at my own pace even if it means befriending my cats like they're people and staying in most Friday nights to lay in bed listening to jazz.