Making coffee this morning, I did not know what I would do for the day. I had a general idea like how we have a general idea about how our friends spend their days, but if I were asked to describe either in excruciating detail, counting the unforgiving minutiae, I would be both an unkempt person and a terrible friend. But since no one has such questions, I am spared. I envy those who know what they want in life. I map out every corner of my day on most days because I wander aimlessly. For all checklists I scratch off every day, if someone asked me where I was going, I would not have an answer. Honestly, I would not know where to begin. My dreams change like the weather in this city, which graced us with the sun for precisely one and a half days before sweeping up a gust out of the blue and deciding it would be a storm again. I resemble this sky more than I do any picture anyone has made of me in their mind. For all their surety, I am filled with doubts. I often tell people I do not know how this story ends, that I will be fine with whatever ending I get. The ending is not my concern.
But every so often, I wish it were. I wish I cared about the times I live in, not the centuries that have long passed and the decades I will never get to see. I wish I cared enough to be bothered by this vagueness. But I do not. I do not care about where things go as long as they keep heading somewhere. I believe movement is enough. When things stop moving is when I will be concerned. I know it was not this way earlier. Somewhere below all this, I remember knowing where things were going, steering the course, and not giving in to the forces of time and fate. But like someone who wakes up on an island, having fought unbelievably well against nemeses they can never defeat, I, too, have no intention of setting sail again. I, too, am grateful that I can still walk, that things still move and that everything is in the right place. There is no greater blessing than braving the storm and coming out unscathed, for whatever it is worth.
But somewhere deep down, a voice has started to emerge. I can hear it sometimes, inciting rebellion within me. Its whispers have gotten louder.