Late, Late Night Cogitation
Do you ever have those moments when you feel so overwhelmed by something completely unidentifiable? Something that presses on your shoulders and wraps around your heart and yet is as tangible as smoke? You reach out, hoping to grasp the cause, and your fingers drift through the edges, empty.
The past few days have been rough for me. I have been weepy and strange. Blue, but not depressed. On a precipice, scared and yet unyielding. I'm fighting off another self-imposed radio silence, but thankfully, I am winning.
Since quitting my job two months ago, I have had all of this time. I planned on spending the summer getting my affairs together and taking the time to work through some internal ish that I never took the time to do when I really, really needed to. But all of this time...man. With this infinite amount of extra time, I feel like I have stepped off of my well-worn path. I can see it; it's still there to the side of me, but even the small change in direction has made the next steps so unclear. I am empty and yet so full of the people and places that surround me. Everything is a dichotomy unto itself, and I am overwhelmed by too many options and opportunity. I am having trouble wrapping my arms around everything.
I feel as if I have lost my center, and have really started to wonder if I have ever had one.
I keep thinking of a conversation I had with my Dad not too long ago. (Suddenly my life is much more Dad-centric, and that is completely new after holding him at a very necessary arms-length my whole life. But that's another story.) He and I were sitting outside in front of a cafe on Columbus Ave in San Francisco. It was one of the few times he has been able to speak with me candidly about the travels I have planned.
He asked me, "Felicia, why now? Why not earlier or later? What are you looking for?"
I sat silent for a split second, and then without thinking I said, "To find passion."
He reeled back and looked at me square. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again and chuckled. "Okay." Pause. "I think I get it now more than ever, even though I'm sure I can't begin to understand."
"I don't want a half life, Dad. I want more than I am getting, and it is completely rash to go across the world looking for something I may find here, but why not?"
He sipped his coffee, and gave me another direct glance. "Why not, really."
"I just don't want to be like Mom was. She lived and she made a good life, but she wasn't passionate. I don't know if she was ever really passionate about anything while I was growing up, and it frightens me that I may have the same inability inherent in me."
He looked down and sighed. "Felicia, she had passion. Her passion was you."
I was stunned. And flattened by my ignorance. My rampant self-involvement.
My mom had passion all along. In every day. And I couldn't see it. All I saw was a 9 to 5 existence and a solitude that didn't include me.
I've been thinking about this again and again, trying to source out my current ickiness. With all of this time that I have given myself, why am I not taking fuller advantage? Or am I and I am just too dense to realize it? Why do I feel bereft of passion while I am continually surrounded by wonderful people and places? Why does solitude feel like it is constantly encroaching?
That's what makes me so uncomfortable. I am sitting within the half-life that I am so wary of; of which my initial observation lacked the clarity of the comparison I was trying to make. I want open arms and a full heart. I want to be able to live it and show it in a way that I never understood in my mom.
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What I'm forgetting to remember is that I am surrounded by choices. A thousand each day. And my place in the universe is relevant and powerful.
All it takes is one foot in front of the other on this new path. So what the fuck am I waiting for?
That's rhetorical, by the way.
**Softly, behind me.
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