It Starts With…

It starts with reading a piece of writing that frays the last of the threads holding me together. It’s the way the words sizzle on my skin and a desire to be able to do it, too, all the while never feeling like I will.

It’s the minuscule changes in the air that whisper of the changing seasons and a belief that I’m running out of time. Always running out of time.

It’s shouting into the abyss, a dark void where it doesn’t matter how loud or how long or how passionate the words are — no one can hear it.

It’s a constant treadmill of doing, doing, doing, but never stopping to ask why, why, why.

It’s in the quiet moments of midnight when I find the voice telling me to hold on for another day. It will get better.

It’s the stupid decision to scroll and then find myself down a rabbit hole of despair and desire and longing and comparison and wasted minutes or hours spent yearning for things that probably aren’t even real.

It’s the song from my playlist that suspiciously plays to remind me of why I wanted to forget about it.

It’s a scalding hot shower, the pinpricks both pain and pleasure reminding me I’m very much alive.

It’s wanting so badly to take the chatter and thoughts from my brain and empty them out so that everyone can see how much is there. How utterly impossible it feels some days to be in this skin of mine.

It’s the foreboding realization that my furbabies are as much of a reason to live as anything else and then remembering that they will probably die before me. And the devastation of that sends me into a whirlwind of depression.

It ends with the clawing, scraping sense of survival after a hard day, wondering if this is all that life has in store for me.

• • •

It starts with a comment from a reader who says “You are talented and your writing has touched me.”

It’s in the moments of waking, before the day starts, where there is nothing but peace and bliss and serenity as I lay in bed.

It’s a sunrise and a flock of birds visiting the oasis singing their birdsongs.

It’s the first smell and sip of coffee, armor for the day ahead.

It’s catching the cats or the dogs in a moment of their pure primal joy.

It’s the time and the space and habit I carve out to write before I start my day.

It’s the moments of recognition and connection with another human being that remind me we’re all trying the best we can.

It’s being lit up from the inside out when something new is learned.

It’s watching my dogs and cats run to my husband when he comes home from work like they haven’t seen him in weeks.

It’s in the joy of consuming something creative that was made by someone else and it gave me the feels.

It’s the crickets chirping out my office window as I stay up late and journal.

It ends with the seconds before I fall asleep, gratitude spilling forth for this life I call mine.