“This is what we’ve been looking for since the day we met. Time. That’s what the Good Place really is — it’s not even a place, really. It’s just having enough time with the people you love.”
The Good Place, by Michael Schur
I wake up in the morning and the first thing I feel is uncertainty. What’s my day going to look like? Am I going to enjoy it? Should I feel happier, more excited, or is it so wrong to feel nothing at all? What a waste of flesh and spirit if I sit down here, with all of my luck and privilege while the world burns, and am not quite feeling what I should be.
I hate making decisions. I never know what to pick, and I am so preoccupied by my own self-importance to think that such a minuscule choice could ever change the world. That every single choice I made is going to leave such an imprint on my soul that I could never take it back; I am frozen in time most days, and by guilt on the others. What a waste of flesh and spirit if I sit down here, with all of my self-pity and my narcissism and my doubts, and I do not move.
Most of the choices I make these days feel like they’re not mine but have been thrusted upon me by the weight of other people’s expectations – or, more accurately, what I imagined them to be. I read books as a child that made me want to be free, and I traded these in hopes to be good. I did everything that was expected of me, I performed well, and I became a careful curation of the person they all thought I was and therefore needed to be. And I do not assume this to be a particularly unique or revolutionary sentiment, but what do I do when every good choice I make is haunted by the terror that I hold no agency in this world? That all of the good decisions I have taken were corrupt, when all of the mistakes I made were, in fact, due to something rotted inside of me specifically?
“Your big revelation is Life is complicated? That is not a revelation. That’s a divorced woman’s throw pillow.”
I never could bring myself not to ascribe meaning to my decisions and their ramifications. I know my life might be as meaningless as can be, and I am certain it is fleeting, but isn’t my worth still determined by my ability to accommodate others and be a pinnacle of morality? Then, if this doesn’t apply to others, aren’t all of the intrusive thoughts plaguing my mind a reflection of the darkness that resides within me and a confirmation that I’ll never be good enough?
Twenty-five years of life, and I am no closer to an answer of what I should be feeling, thinking, doing, and being – and I keep feeling like I’m messing up; I keep drowning in all of those thoughts that aren’t even mine. I could be picking the lesser of two evils and still chastise myself until I cry myself to sleep. Everyone could forgive me, or understand, or tell me it’s not my fault, and I would still be in this bed forever.
And the hard truth is: I worry that I will never be able to live for myself because I am too constantly afraid not to live right. And, that this will mean that I can never truly accomplish anything before I die because I am so preoccupied by people’s perceptions of my strengths and flaws to do so.
“I guess all I can do is embrace the pandemonium, find happiness in the unique insanity of being here, now.”
I twisted myself into knots for a certainty that’s never coming and, as my life feels like it’s seeping out of me, I am forced to confront the idea that all this work I’ve done amounts to nothing. That I was so burdened by the idea that I should be living someone else’s life – that I shouldn’t waste all of this potential on the wrong people, the wrong jobs, and the wrong plans, that I don’t remember most of the time I spent performing it. And as I sit there, with my twenty-five years of life and the few memories I cling to, I wish that I could live in them forever – but realise that good places come and go, and they won’t wait for me in the now if I spend the rest of my days in the then. That I can wish for it, but I’m not meant to stay here.
The dam broke, and the river is overflowing, and it washed away my house. I drown in a sea of could’ve and should’ve and I feel powerless to stop – so I embrace it. My ribs broke and my lungs are burning, and nothing’s feeling good but everything’s calmer now.
I wish someone could pull me out of the sea of worries I sank my ship into, but I’m always afraid I might have drowned all of the people who could. I use the past like a crutch and I mourn the future before it even started. I am made of regrets and unforgiveness, and I am frozen in time most days, and by guilt on the others. But as I lay in the bed I made, with the side next to me feeling cold, and the ceiling so far above me it could as well be the sky, I remind myself that I can move if I want. That I can stop agonising over my decisions because the world will never stop spinning for me, but I can always try to make it a little better for someone else.
It’s what we owe to each other.
“Sometimes, when you’re feeling helpless, the secret is to help someone else. Get out of your own head. Trust me.”
andstillwedream 