I am the easiest person to find. I visit the same coffee shops like clockwork. I do the same things every day. Even my unhappiness, if there was any left, was a repetition, an aftershock of old heartache. All my novelty is kept close to the chest, kept to myself. For someone standing outside looking in, nothing ever changes. It is true, of course. There is an aspect of my life set in stone, unchanging. I do not mean this lightly.
We pause in one place because we’re often waiting for someone to come looking. A lot of this life was built that way, for better or worse, but just like the weather today has nothing to do with what was before, only what is now—even though what was before caused it—my life right now has nothing to do with what made it the way it is. If I ever look at this part, I see it only as a blessing. Time only goes forward, giving gifts to all of us; I was given the gift of patience. It has been a gift that keeps giving.
But why do I feel lost so often if I am so easy to find? All my life has been a path to finding myself, and it seems as easy as I am to find, I seem to have eluded all attempts I’ve made towards myself. For all my stability, I feel terribly uncertain about what will happen to me. For all my constant banality, I seem to have developed a penchant for finding myself in the most unique situations, none of which I intend on getting into, almost as if there is a certain reward for this steadfastness that is so far imbued into my heart and soul, I do not know who else to be and how else to live. If I do something, I do it for years. For all that I do not do, you could not make me do it even if I were strapped to a chair, and you were slowly breaking all my bones. I either walk too fast or not at all; I always look in the wrong place when I’m looking for myself.
Some part of me will permanently hide from myself. Some part of me will always wait for time to start going backwards, and so, I will never be able to find it. I have inadvertently left myself behind on a trail, and thus far, there is no reconciliation. I have not been able to catch up with myself, and at the same time, I do not have time to wait for what is left behind.