There are days so calm you live through and barely stop to think about them. As beneficial as they are for happiness, they are useless for the writing. I laugh, and I live, and then I face the page in terror, which soon becomes agony. Where is my mind? It is lost in the daze of simple pleasures, laughter and conversation and the quiet embrace of a vacation right at the end of the year. It has not stopped to think or worry.
Earlier this morning, I did not think of much, but I did sip my coffee surrounded by family. For a second, I thought of it: my sordid search for balance and how this year has proven to be an answer for it all. It lasted for but a second, and then, interrupted by laughter, I came back to the moment. In many ways, this was precisely what this year had given me: a steady stream of interruptions. All my happiness, which was in abundance, was interrupted before turning into complacency, and even a smidge of my sadness was stopped before it became heartache—long before it even got close.
This was the balance I had begged for from others, from cities and friends and lovers. I was denied this over and over, but often as we do in dejection, I was too afraid to open the letter. If I had, if I had even once had the guts to ask: why do you refuse this tiny demand of mine? I would have received a simple answer in every letter, email, and phone call. It would have been plastered on the walls if I had only once had it in me to ask.
“It is not ours to give.”