all things grow, all things grow

I'm standing in a crowd of people. I'm swaying to the sweet, sweet voice of Sufjan Stevens. I'm smiling, so big. I'm happy. I'm right where I want to be. Where I am supposed to be.

Last night was exactly one year since I found out. Three hundred and sixty five days ago, at this very moment, I was waking up in the ICU after having what felt like a million emergency procedures and biopsies. I was waking up. Waking up to a life that wasn't what it should be, what it could be...

Then I changed. I changed so many things. It's amazing what can happen in just one year. How just one hurdle can throw off the entire course of your life... for better or for worse. I am running in the right direction now. It's all going to be okay, better.

I feel more like myself now. I fill up every inch of every day with love. I am bursting at the seams with love. I am running towards a life full of meaning. I am trying to be better, to do better.

And now here I am. I am not perfect. But I am here.

Where I should be.

 
I was in love with the place
In my mind, in my mind
I made a lot of mistakes
In my mind, in my mind

You came to take us
All things go, all things go
To recreate us
All things grow, all things grow
We had our mindset
All things know, all things know
You had to find it
All things go, all things go

If I was crying
In the van with my friend
It was for freedom
From myself and from the land
I made a lot of mistakes
I made a lot of mistakes
I made a lot of mistakes
I made a lot of mistakes

(Sufjan Stevens- Chicago)

snooze.

Everywhere I look recently I see ghosts. I feel tired. I am tired from shoving it all back inside. I am tired of bringing it up. I know no one wants to hear it anymore.

It's been a whole year...

So here goes, another cathartic free for all mess of emotion. I will speak into the empty space so I can finally stop choking on the words..."remember then, I can't believe it still, I was so tired, I was so sick, what a crazy thing, but I'm good now, different, so good.." Things could not possibly be more different now. Different people, different house, different way of seeing things, different challenges. I am so different. Yet I keep coming back to the same.

It's just my mind. It is so jumbled. Trying to separate the sameness out from the constantly changing background. Trying to hang on for dear life to that feeling. To that desperate thankfulness. To those tears of joy.

No one is happy all that time.

I feel like I am cheating. Wake up, study, eat, sleep, breathe, breathe, breathe. Sameness. How easily we all forget what it's like to be upside down. How easily we sink back into where it is too comfortable. How easily we let that different slip though our fingers. We readjust to the different so it too becomes part of the same. We recalibrate. We keep moving forward. We keep breathing.

I lust for someone to come along and wake me up. Yearn for it. Slap some damn sense into me. Open my eyes. Yet, I know there is no one capable of a gesture so grand. Well no one that is, except for myself. And right now I am just hitting that snooze button, sliding deeper under the covers, shielding myself from the cold, from the dark, from the sameness. I am scared of not feeling. Of becoming mediocre. Of being a fraud.

I guess that's normal.

So for now I will retreat back under those covers to protect my vulnerabilities. My sanity. My sameness. For just a minute longer. Knowing that I WILL find that place where I am hiding and I will invite myself to see life upside down, again. To break through that sameness that is so comfortable but so terribly smothering.

I will, I promise, but just one minute more....

Liv

We'll fast forward to a few years later
And no one knows except the both of us
And I have honored your request for silence
And you've washed your hands clean of this