Sometimes I wake up and look at myself in the mirror and I have no idea who I am. And for being so musically inept, or perhaps too distracted to sit down and focus on the piano keys, it's when I turn on a certain song and, oh, there you are again, I see myself again.
Things are so imperfect and yet we expect them to play out so fluidly. I'm learning that when things play out in such a jagged, heart crushing way, to not give those moments more meaning than they deserve, for often, as often as it goes, it isn't about what happened but how life moves forward. The what doesn't always matter, it just matters that we got through it, perhaps not as eloquently as we wanted, but that doesn't matter. Life is imperfect, afterall. It's getting through it, and being thankful, that matters.
Sometimes I find myself so distracted by the outside world that I forget what's going on right in front of me. I want to dream big and live big and love big and experience big but in a way where each of those bigs can be powerful as a grand adventure but without letting those tiny misicule dot moments go unrecognized, because it's these tiny miniscule dot moments, where suddenly you wink at me from across the coffee shop, that I'm like okay, don't forget, it's these moments, too. These are the really super valuable dot moments.
Sometimes I find myself stuck on a word and I cannot move on until the next song plays. And so I sit here, and I wait. I wait until a new burst of inspiration plays through a note in the song that is playing, muffling quiet conversations. And I keep waiting.
Sometimes I wake up and look at myself in the mirror and I wonder how long it will be until I no longer recognize my physical self. For as deep as my self seems to get buried, I still recognize myself in the mirror. I recognize my eyes and the small gap between my two front teeth. I recognize my unbrushed hair that still hurts just as badly to brush it out as when I was a kid. I recognize new spots on my skin from staying in the sun too long and that the left side of my mouth seems to be wrinkling more than the other side. For when I have those mornings where I have to wake up and try to find myself, I still see my physical self, and that gives me some sense of comfort. But what happens when I'm gone? What happens when me as I feel it is no longer me as I've always seen it?
I dress in black more these days, which is so ironic because I've fought the color black for years and even committed through photos and blog posts to noteverwearblack. But I'm tired. I get older, and I'm only 27, but I get older and I find myself faced with more decisions than I know how to handle and I'm reminded of that article that says humans can only make so many decisions in a day and that it doesn't matter how hard or easy these decisions are. You have a set number, and then you fade away. And so looking at my closet and seeing all these colors, while they are all so beautiful and remind me of certain days, I feel too tired to decide which color to match with another color, and so I keep reaching for my darks, my neutrals, my clothes that I don't have to think or decide on, and you know what, I can quite hoenstly say, I have more room for all of these other far more important decisions and... it's just really nice.
The air is cooling–it's that time again. Time where I wrap myself in a scarf the size of a blanket and wear wool socks and pull out old sweaters from that blue bucket in my room that I forgot to put away last year. It's that time again, where the leaves fall and things slow and I get back into a routine and I'm just so happy to be here, I could cry. I could cry because life is so imperfect but it's these tiny miniscule dot moments when the air is cooling and my breath feels chilled and no matter what happened or what happens, life is so insanely beautiful in a twisted way that I can't help but find myself smiling, even when I don't always know why.