It felt more like an interlude, an in-between before the journey continues.
I feel frustrated and overwhelmed, yet still eager.
I feel frustrated because being grown up sucks. I didn't do nearly as much as I hoped to over this short break. My responsibilities have a way of calling me away from the things I intend to do.
I feel overwhelmed because there is so much that seems to be in the balance in my life right now. There is so much that seems poised on the edge of certain chaos, one draft might make it fall. I feel almost helpless; like one walking a tightrope, steps wavering, balance unsettling.
I was sorting through my things today. I have been meaning to do this all week but I kept getting called away by other responsibilities. Having to pack up my bedroom makes this journey frightfully real. It reminds me that time is running out and I am really leaving.
Those who know me know that, to the untrained eye, my bedroom looks a like clustered and chaotic mess. I'm not claiming that this is not true, yes my bedroom is clustered, but this is an organized sort of chaos. There are books and notebooks stacked on every surface. There are sketches and scribbles of maps on the walls. There are canvases in the corner and trinkets scattered about.
Yet, those who know me also know that, I know where everything is in this chaotic mess. Everything in my room has its place. I know which book sits where and I know the story behind most every trinket and painting.
Yet, here I am. Packing up my things to make room for another who will soon be filling it with his own things; creating his own chaotic and organized mess and lining it with his own stories.
I'm not leaving yet, but I am leaving soon. And this makes me feel uneasy.
My bedroom is, as it is to most I believe, my safe space. It is the place where my books surround me and my cat sleeps. It is where my desk is, the desk which I used to fancy could take me anywhere if only I sat down with a pencil in hand. It is the space where I know every corner, every trinket; where the things that are mine -the things that are a part of who I am, surround me.
Packing away these things makes my heart ache. Today when my Dad took down my ballet bar I felt like I was saying farewell to something; my childhood perhaps, but also to my safe place.
It is a little less mine now and one day, frightfully soon, it will not be mine at all.
The things beyond this little safe place are uncertain. I am going out into the world. Not all at once, but ever so slowly. For the first time in my life failure is a real possibility. For the first time in my life it is not enough to just dream but I have to consider the real possibility of what I will do if I should fail.
And, if I feel like I'm barely making it now, how much harder will it be when I am out on my own?
I sat down as I was packing up my things. I looked around at the boxes and the things that line the walls, and I found myself debating unpacking it all again just to take it all in one last time before it goes away.
My past is a little further behind me today; my future a lot closer than it was mere months ago.
I am uncertain that I will make it. But it is not me that I have faith in.
I feel frustrated and I feel overwhelmed, but I also feel eager because I know that my story, as all stories do, has an ending.
And I can't wait to see how it ends.
But it's not my story at all now, is it?
I stepped a little closer to the unknown today, and this time, the pencil is not in my hands.
"I am the desinger of my own catastrophe."
~Unknown