In the Middle of It

We live in a world of hyperbole. Everything is outstanding, a profound meditation, devastating, or ruined. It all started with ‘awesome‘ and didn’t stop there. Now, we don’t have a comprehension of our life that lies between these two extremes because life is not full of excesses or deficiencies. It is somewhere in the middle and it is punctuated by the powerful emotions of living. I sincerely think that the way hyperbole surrounds our everyday living is having more impact on us than we know. It is the source of a lot of discontent in our lives.

This is also why, even though we are living in a time of such pain and suffering, that the world has just gone on as it has always done. We have not been able to stop and tend to our duress. We have exhausted our vocabulary so quickly with these extreme expressions that when we really needed to talk about our pain it has become commonplace. Even the extremities of our lives have become commonplace.

When I asked Boy what he thought about my plant conundrum (that I wrote about two weeks ago) he said to me that I can choose to project my intentions on to the plants or I can choose to understand myself through them. I find that very reassuring because I can stop at any moment to make the plants and their growth about myself. So, I have stopped and it has put my mind at ease. How much of my own dislike for myself can I put onto them? I cannot. I should not. Sometimes I feel I have shrunk as a person in the last year. I curled up into someone else and now I think from time to time — what of all the women I had been? What happened to those women I used to be?

Yesterday, I told my friend that I cannot write back anymore or text much anymore because “words are too many and then, not enough.” It’s also how I feel tonight. It’s all quiet and dark outside. The city has been given the day off. I am out of ideas on what to do, how to fill up these minutes that stretch far ahead of me. Three very tiring weeks have gone by, and here we are looking at the future from this edge of the shore. Who is to say what will happen? What’s there to say, really? We tried so hard. We really did.

I’ve always loved Passenger’s music and lyrics. If I could have a theme song for my life, I would want them to write it. ‘Sword from the Stone’ is the closest anything has come to how it feels these days. And also a bonus song ‘Patchwork’, because the lyrics are so beautiful.