Closing the year

It was never hope. What I grew up thinking I lived on, it wasn’t hope. It was patience. The difference may not sound too big of a deal, but it is. When you’re hopeful you sleep at night thinking, hoping, that tomorrow is going to be better. When you learn to be patient, you sleep at night, or not quite sleep, knowing for a fact that tomorrow is going to be like its predecessor or maybe even worse.

I end 2018 with a fact: I traveled. A lot. Sometimes physically: the thrill of being in airports and in cities that feel more familiar to you than your own skin. But mostly it’s my mind that did most of the traveling. Being a quiet child I was quite the daydreamer. I made the most hilarious jokes and drew the most ridiculous scenarios. And I stayed in my head. Underneath layers and layers of isolation. They build up: the loneliness, the imaginary company, and the tenderness. Then everything becomes disappointing: the awkward company, the labored conversations, and the love.

I am patient. And so I wish next year is something. Anything. It scares me that at twenty i’m kneeling at the doors of happiness. I am a sinner waiting outside a tumbled church, wanting to repent, asking for forgiveness. Does happy know how to abandon, or is it the warmth in the arms of sadness that makes you too reluctant to leave.

I want to see this very post this time next year. I want to feel embarrassed enough to remove it. I want to beat that one damned law of physics. And maybe, just maybe, make something out of the nothingness my life has come to.