June 26, 2013
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This must be it.
Dinner tonight was halva and a dish of blueberries. I ate it while staring out the window. These days I have been wondering if you arrive at adulthood long before you know you’re there, if you don’t see that you’ve grown up until you look back at your trail of choices and realize that they’ve taken you to a place you feel no need to justify or defend. This week I had a hard conversation with my mom about my future. She cried. I was perhaps the most collected, the most articulate, I have ever been. I wonder if adulthood is hearing yourself stand your ground.
I wonder if it is realizing that the people who love you have no idea who you are. How often is love like that? We hold so fast to memories that we refuse to see the person standing before us. When we miss a person, how much of what we miss is really them, and how much is just ideas? But I don’t know who my parents are, either, and although I can imagine the many ways I am breaking their hearts, I will never understand. They are mysteries, too, and their love is real even if it feels as though it’s directed at a person who doesn’t actually exist.
Maybe adulthood is understanding that the spaces between us all are large and growing larger all the time. Maybe it is loving without wanting to close the gap.
What a strange time this is.
h.
Comments (5)
so what ARE you thinking about your future? it’s kinda hard to tell from these posts, but i have a guess or two.
@complicatedlight - You’re probably guessing quite right. I am vague about these things because I’m not sure how I feel about making large declarations about my life over the internet, and this would be a pretty strange one to make – but I’ve been seriously considering the idea of professed religious life (as in, becoming a nun). I’ve been exploring it for quite a while, and have gone as far as finding a community I would like to join, and taking the steps towards entering. It’s a loooong process, and it’s designed so that by the time you commit, you’re really,very sure – so I have a long way to go, and may realize in time that it’s not for me. But I’ve begun. And I hope it is for me.
that’s EXACTLY what i was thinking…
from what i know of you, it seems to me that if anyone’s suited to it, you are. i’d be secretly happy knowing you were out there doing just that – though i’d never say so.
that’d be like, pressure.
@complicatedlight - Phil, thank you for this
The secret is out now! It does feel quite right. It will be a long time before I know for sure, but I’m very glad to be on this path, wherever it ends up.
for you…a big, warm <3