I sit down to write in gaps between whatever qualifies as a task. But this, this is not a task. These words are not a task. I am now realising, once again, something that I already know and have known for a long time—that all my life is but a bridge to this desk. I wish I had the privilege of being so hopeless that I had nothing to lose or the riches to not care about something as perverse as a to-do list, but I am neither here nor there. I am not in the sky, and I am not on the ground. I am somewhere in the middle.
That means I will always live two lives until my fortune takes a turn, for the literal better or worse. I will be suspended like a bug on a wire, crossing, not knowing where to, aloof about where from, only crawling as if my life depended on it. To be in the middle is to drive through the old neighbourhood and occasionally walk through it to visit the remnants of the life you were never destined for, that you spent years building a ship to sail away from. It is never being able to fully leave it either. To be in the middle is to spend your days drenched in the blessings you never had, yet worry over how it will never be enough. Mostly, however, it means that every word I ever write will have an echo. I will always write it while looking at my watch, and I will always live my life, the one that feeds into this mulchy broth of words I stir day in and day out, with the guilt of knowing I have not written yet, or written enough, or written any better than I did the day before. The last one will hurt like a second-degree burn on the palm of my hand, but I will keep writing, hands flying over the keys whenever I get the time.
And I will tell myself: it is all good as long as I have written, that I should keep climbing uphill, and that there is only one life. Yes, I believe that is the problem. There is only one life, but one too many fires to put out And between jumping out the window, running from the flames and being grateful to have made it on my feet, I will be able to write a few words sometimes. I better make it so even a second is enough.
A second will have to do. After all, there are things, too.