The fog

Right now, the steps of my journey are a slow pitter patter on the uneven cobbles beneath my feet.

I know that some days will feel like this - it's inevitable. Human nature is such that we can take into ourselves the best, most ecstatic human emotions possible, yet we have to also find ourselves facing the comedown of disappointment and rejection which is the free fall into the unknown.

I'm feeling a little lost, a little out of sorts, but I also know that I'll find my way pretty soon. The path is there, I've just stumbled off it a little. I just have to find a way of adjusting the metronome to the rhythm of my "new" life.

I find myself staying up late and reading. Reading poetry again. Feeling the emotions on the page so avidly. It's so reminiscent of my first year of undergraduate days. It's strange because of how much I've grown and changed over the last four years. I feel such a different person from who I "was" then. It's not a bad thing but I'm just learning to accept the evolution of my personality as the years tick over.

I feel more in touch with life than I've ever been, but, paradoxically I feel a disconnect. I think part of this feeling is to do with the fact that I care so much. I'm passionate about my work and succeeding to the best of my abilities; I'm passionate about my life and I'm unbelievably appreciative of the opportunities and gifts I am afforded here. But what I'm most passionate about is really getting to know people. To be able to move past superficiality and really just ask the deep questions that matter. 

I really truly do have a love and a passion for life, but I do feel every emotion so intensely and deeply that sometimes it takes longer to process. People move so fast in life and sometimes I feel like I'm still in a moment that happened five minutes ago. I just want to savour my experiences and many slip out of my grasp before I can hold onto them to create memories. We parody ourselves and wear so many masks that I just want to show people it's okay to be vulnerable. To say to someone, "put your guard down for a second, and talk to me."

Liberation is a word I've never learnt to be properly comfortable with for a variety of reasons. To me, it's always represented a form of unacheivable freedom that is not readily available in human life. For me to be "liberated" is to be able to live out my ideal sense of self but this seems so often to be something that cannot happen. Social pressures, expectations and stigmas so often render us frozen individuals, suspended in an icy cavern and the warmth that is necessary to melt our exteriors may never truly penetrate us because the frostbite is just too much of a chill. But there's always the hope of a greater sun whose warmth is such that no cold can withstand its radiance.

I've always believed in life that things can be made irrevocably simple if one has the right attitude but now I think I'm learning to accept that complications are okay too. Sometimes we can't solve the incomprehensible riddles that beset us and there's no shame in just admitting we might need to leave things unanswered.

I may be in a patch of fog at the moment but it will soon clear and I'll find the sunshine gleaming upon the right path.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

- Elizabeth Bishop