Monday, February 9, 2015

the unknowns

Mercury is in retrograde. Chaos prevails. You win, Universe.

Seventy beautiful degrees in what should be the dead of winter. Loud noises late at night – things falling off the shelves without explanation in the pantry, the television turning on with no warning, the back door slamming itself open as if to announce an unwanted presence. People I love coming and going, coming and going. What are you even doing here? I ask. His reply is pedantic. It annoys me. Didn’t you hear? He says. Mercury is in retrograde. 

Later that day I walk against the wind. Embrace the chaos. Embrace the chaos. Embrace the chaos. I think about what that means. Then I think about what an incorrigible knot of hair I will be left with once the wind is done with me. My lips are chapped. Something’s in my eye. I can't see who you are or what you'd like from me or when or if or how I am ever going to get even a semblance of the life I want. Everything is sticky and tangled and uncomfortable. This is me, not embracing the chaos.

I get into my car, drive home, and take about twenty seven deep breaths. The unknowns are winning. I convince myself that in six years I’ll be Sunday-brunching somewhere wonderful with a rewarding career and a pile of important emails waiting upon my return on Monday morning, with a nice person and a nice dog and some nice Tupperware back at the nice apartment with the windows that I will look out of later that night, with a life that is full of shared calendars and kale salads and oohing and ahhing at friend’s plain-looking babies, where it will all be delightfully boring, terribly stable. I feel better and think again about embracing the chaos – appreciating this time for what it is, for what it brings, and for the future perspective it will grant me. A horribly stable life awaits you. Kale. Plain babies. Big windows. Some structure.

I feel better. My mind has been quieted, Mercury momentarily overruled. But downstairs I hear something that the hardwood floors cannot disguise – slow, steady, footsteps. 

I am not alone anymore. Who is in my house?