The other day I sat in my apartment like I always do. There wasn’t much going on like there never is anything going on. For all stories of my being able to handle multiple responsibilities at the same time, I’d have little to show if someone were to walk into my home unannounced. Most of my days went lazing around on the rug. It’s surprising I even get anything accomplished at all.
I sat in front of the TV. A rather hilarious episode of some show was on it. I wonder if it was as funny as I remember or if something altogether different was happening within me, but I burst out laughing. There I was: a madman, sitting alone, watching the TV, laughing uncontrollably without a care in the world. Perhaps, it isn’t as out of the ordinary for most people. For some of us, this feeling of joy had, for the lack of a better word, died.
Make no mistake, I have not felt dejected in months. Yet, as my laughter grew louder that day, in that moment of absolute loss of control, I learned I wanted more of this; honestly, attempting to write about it has been a terrible mistake. However, since these words are here, I can’t do much to take them back.
Now that the crime has been committed, I want to tell you that there comes a moment in our lives when we experience something that we had lost without realising it. We tend to lose a lot of ourselves if we’re not looking, and we were seldom looking.
At that moment, I knew nothing else; I only knew it was important.
Moments like this particular one are important. As I sat there laughing for an hour or so, until my stomach hurt, until my eyes got watery, nothing mattered. No amount of heartbreak I had experienced was important enough to make me stop. No memory overflowing with regret could take it away. No failure was staring me in the eye.
Towards the tail-end of a rather eventful year when the single strand I had been hanging by broke and sent me flying across a mess of my own making, when I lost myself one too many times, I found a single moment I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
On an uneventful afternoon, I stumbled upon joy. Perhaps, for the first time in a long time.