Some people thrive on order. Some thrive on chaos. I thrive on a suspension between the two—an ordered chaos. It is a capacity to enjoy the sheer humanity I have in me. To be human was to be as constant as a mountain and be as mercurial as the sky, both at the same time, simultaneously. I do not fight my order; I do not despise my chaos. They are in me in equal amounts, overflowing in their own way. When carrying two mugs filled to the brim, we often spill one or the other, I spilt order sometimes, and on other occasions, I spilt chaos. This duality in me was always more complicated than being one or the other. I envied people who could pick a word and use it to describe themselves forever. Something in me did not let me make a home in labels. I don’t know what it was, but it had, on most days, made my life much larger and, on some days, much, much worse.
I was like the clouds which have teased the city for the past few weeks. Days spent in overcast skies did not amount to any rain. Then, it rained on a sunny day—the sky changed from a bright, yellowish overlay to a stolid, pale blue in a split second, commanding the breeze to change into howling winds in a snap. They often joke about how you could not forecast the weather in the valley. I believe this philosophy, this weather had rubbed off on me growing up. Like this town, I could not tell you who I would be today, only what I could be, what I thrived on. On one end was my liking for everything in the right place and my desire to know everything before it happened. On the other was a unique propensity to grow and keep my wits about myself on stormy days.
I was always on the tightrope, carefully balancing myself as I walked from one end to another and then back again. I had been scared of falling for many years, and my steps were shaky. I now know how that cannot happen. I know this delicate balance, this propensity to keep walking on the rope over and over was to me what the rock was to Sisyphus. Now, there is nothing but my walk to nowhere.