There I was, sitting in class with thoughts racing through my mind like rush-hour traffic---screeching, revving, thumping contemplations. At the exact moment I looked up, registering my professor's gravity, we locked eyes in his attempt to pull me in. He wrote, "Epiphany" on the board. Suddenly, there it was, like a prophesy.
I'd been waiting all this time to make sense of it, when merely an individual clad handsomely in designer denim, with a pressed button-up shirt, thin-rimmed glasses and pointed leather loafers finally touched a stick of green dry-erase to the whitest board known to man, and finally I knew.
I'd been attempting aimlessly to understand the onslaught of tragedies I'd faced time and again without any reprieve. Was I flawed? Cursed? Had I offended someone so badly in a past life that my forever-Karma was to suffer and sulk? Often, my mind reeled with those considerations, but at the end of the day, I knew one simple thing to be the most factual fact of factuality. Ready? It's this---life: it is what it is.
So at the end of the day, we all tally up our victories and losses, sometimes on the same hand and others on an endless list of heart-wrenching broken battles. But at night, when you lay your head on your little pillow, it's not the missed appointments or miffed coworkers that matter. That pit in your stomach should never churn for bill-collectors or burnt bridges. If there's anything I've learned in this spiral of misfortune, it's that sometimes you have to focus on the pillow itself. There are small comforts in life that are ours for the taking. For me, it was the discovery of a new hobby (I like to draw and be creative, go figure).
Also, by omitting negativity and toxic friendships, I've opened up a whole new realm of happy, inspiring faces. I won't be satisfied until I'm surrounded by yoga instructors, artists and college professors, because there I've finally, FINALLY found the peacefulness and diversity I'm looking for. But it hasn't been easy. Sometimes I think the universe is trying to teach me one lesson, then once I've mastered the fine arts of coping, forgiving, loving, accepting and being, I'm hammered with another pitfall to drag myself out of. I'm certain I don't have the monopoly on broken hearts, but if I could stop losing friends, pets, family and money, I think I'd find the time to perfect myself in a more superficial manner. I'd like to have a perfect body, I'd like to have great hair and skin and manicured toenails.
Maybe I'll get there, maybe I won't, but I do have an amazing daughter, I have sweet little pets to brighten my world, I have a fun job where people like me and I'm competent; I have a house I can finally call home and a spattering of people that I actually love with all my heart.
Years ago (probably 7) I drove to a park in Salt Lake City. I'd navigated nervously there and sat insecurely watching the city-savvy crowds flock in and out of my perimeter. The girls were stylish and the men seemed successful. Squirrels skitted aesthetically through quiet trees and eclectic cafes dotted the surrounding blocks. I thought, "I want to live here. I want to find this tranquility." Sometimes, strolling through that same park, it occurs to me that I'm exactly where I wanted to be. The University is within walking distance from my house, my landlord stops by with home-brewed beer when the weather is nice, after class I meet my friend Brandon at Market Street for both calamari and laughs and I ride my bike to work everyday where I make coffee and look out the window at the things that once were foreign.
It's strange how a person can break their neck and then try harder than ever to finally be whole. In the past year, Topaz and I have been deliriously happy together. We just spent the day outside on a play-date with Makenna at the zoo. After agreeing that tigers were everyone's favorite animal, we headed to a nearby park where we practiced cartwheels and handstands. Later, Topie and I walked up and down our street lined with charming tulips while she slowly maneuvered her scooter and I looked at things to take pictures of. Once we were home, I tucked her into her bed while we argued about who loved the other more, like we do each and every night. "I love you most." "No, I love YOU most." "No, I do." It never changes. But I always win because I close the door before she has a chance to say it one last time.
Now I'm home and the air is warm. I'm procrastinating homework because I'd rather drink Saison and write about spirals and epiphanies than break apart Derrida's linguistic theory in essay form. He said that meaning is lost before the utterance is even complete. Therefore, there is no truth because misinterpretation causes intention to be permanently skewed. I don't know if that's right, but I
do know that it's impossible to write like Shakespeare or Hemingway or Chaucer or Kerouac. It's impossible to be heard until you're dead. I had a close call, but it wasn't close enough.
As soon as the morphine wore off, I realized that people are silly, fickle beings. I'm just as silly. I'm just as fickle. Or am I? Years later, we'll all look back at this and laugh. We'll have a nice chuckle over my misdemeanor and pending lawsuit for my dog stumbling over the fragile Chinese Crested that darted underfoot. We'll giggle about the time my car's engine dropped to the ground when I hit a bump and also hysterically recall my ex-husband's sudden refusal to pay for his required share of childcare during a period that I was already trying so desperately to get back on my feet. Even if it never becomes funny, there's a certain character development insisting I simply roll with the punches.
My mission is this: eat salad, get back in shape. Finish school, graduate, land an incredible job, move to Paris, write, sing, draw, dance and smile.
Because there is no point to survival if you don't clutch that one little pillow tightly in your childishly hopeful hands and promise yourself that from this point forward you'll always dream big. If you count every day that you open your eyes as a gift, make it count. If nothing else matters, make yourself matter.
Flashing back to that moment in class, I promised myself that that's exactly what I'd do. By embracing the components of life that build me up and brushing aside the ones that bring me down, I've patented a much more peaceful place for myself.
And I suppose I just wanted to ride this beer buzz and hammer it out on my computer. As for my epiphany, I think George Herbert said it best of The Flower:
"And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing. O my only light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom thy tempests fell all night."
Take it or leave it, it is what it is.
