Nowhere to Be, Nowhere to Arrive

A beautiful girl told me today she's ugly. Zoe, if only you could see the world through eyes with no judgment in them at all. I thought that was the whole point of being here. To see nothing and feel everything instead.

Saturday arrived wanting quiet, and I wanted to give it that. More than that, I needed to be alone with it; the collective noise of everyone's own importance has been getting loud lately. It always sounds the same underneath, whatever shape it takes: fear wearing the mask of self-importance, drifting past like clouds with nowhere to be and nowhere to actually land.

I spent the day doing work that had been waiting, editing a video for the company launch. It went well. Familiar, in the way an old pair of jeans is familiar, except these jeans seem to have worn thin in places I didn't expect. I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it's the feeling of stepping backward into a place I've already left, one I'm not certain I want to visit again.

The skills are rusty, but they're still there, buried somewhere in the muscle, quietly hiding from a version of life I've stopped wanting to live. These last two years have changed me deeply enough that I doubt things will go fully back to how they were.

I love the quiet now. I don't need the noise, and I hope I never crave it again. Writing that down, something small moves from the chest to the mouth, close to a smile. I think I've finally found the answer to a question that used to haunt me the way a child fears the dark, certain, somehow, that the nightmare is still coming.

It's always strange, stepping back to look at the whole shape of a life and see how each choice quietly bent its direction. I can do that easily these days, because I can finally see that the choices I'm making now actually serve what my heart wants. It's been a long time coming, but life feels good. I've found a way to enjoy most of what passes through it, even the parts I like less. It's a good ride, and it keeps getting better the longer I stay on it. Maybe that's experience. Maybe it's the training. Maybe it's her.

I think it's some rare mixture of all three, a kind of balance, found right in the eye of the storm this life keeps turning out to be.