You know the moment when everything in your life feels overwhelming? The edge is, maybe, two steps away and you’re absolutely sure that you can not make those next steps without losing “it”? Yes, the leap into insanity is one hop away. What is that? More importantly, what are we supposed to learn?
I am thirty years old. I have a Master’s degree. I am relatively intelligent. Maybe a little cute. Very self-aware. Intuitive. Slightly obsessive. Highly ideal-ed. And yet, I’m struggling through moments of self-doubt and fear. The truth is that I am all of those things but only because someone else told me so. I don’t know that I can own those attributes within my own power. I don’t know at thirty what I knew at twenty-eight, twenty-nine. I’ve forgotten how to read an inspirational quote and allow the chills to run the rails of my back. I’ve allowed daily living to bog down the freedom of creativity I owned only a year or two ago. I’ve forgotten myself.
So what am I supposed to learn? How am I supposed to get back to myself?
Most people in my life would scream, “Just do it!” And they would be correct. The problem I seem to be having is the place after achievement, after you’ve done what you set out to do. I felt very powerful when I was learning my craft of writing at graduate school. I wore my status–black, female, underprivileged–on my chest because I was absolutely proud to have made it into graduate school. For two years, I had the advantage of being under the tutelage of powerful women and men of letters whose voices spoke affirmation over my life. I read books and wrote fiction that enriched my life. I had goals and went about setting each on fire through completion.
But now what? What’s next for me?
I’m in this very lonely vulnerable state. This stagnate state of being is one I can’t accept. Writing is one way that I keep my creative sparks shooting. There are things I can’t always say that my writing says back to me. There are feelings I have that I don’t want to feel but have through revealing them on the page. I’m going to write my way through whatever this is. I’m going to continue to look for work in my field. I’m going to accomplish the next set of goals and then begin another set thereafter.
I have the power. I’ve had it all along. Today might be horrible, and tomorrow may be a little less horrible. I’m going to own whatever kind of day it is.
