Every ounce in me wishes I could tell you where it all began, where this story of me starting my life anew begins, and in many ways, I know the defining moments of this tale. When we think we know something, it isn’t until someone asks us to put it down into words that we see gaps, glaring omissions, and an astonishing lack of detail for things never recorded or even noticed. As much as I pay attention to things, I have not noted what has led me here—this moment, this apartment, the storm raging outside and me, writing. We do not quite know our moment when it happens, and I am equally unaware. Still, something tells me this will be the most crucial moment in my life.
Like most answers in life, you often do not know the question, only that there is an answer. We rarely understand why the storm brings us comfort. The storm is an answer to a question as old as time, but we know it is an answer. We feel it in our bones. Through that gut feeling, I know this is an answer to a question I do not want to ask, and so, because of that reason, I cannot tell you where it all began, just that it did.
Things happen, and we learn to find some sort of peace in it. We learn to find peace in walking about in the city park, and if it is alone that we must do this, then alone we walk. All life is an exercise in adapting. A person’s mettle is not in what they do but how much they can accommodate. Do not tell me what you can bear; show me what you can find your way around. The answers are always in the omissions and the gaps; it is in what we work our way around. There will always be misery, and the storm will occasionally bring the sky down to the ground, but we must find a way around it.
Most life really is quite like an evening stroll. When you walk about the city, occasionally, something blocks your path. Since you’re walking, you do not stop, and since you’re walking ahead, you do not turn around. You simply find a way around whatever it is that halts you. You keep going, step following after step, never stopping, never ceasing.
And that is just about all I can tell you about how I got here, for that is just about all I know.