As a person plagued with anxiety and depression, I find myself desperate for a narrative to move me. Whether it's binge watching seasons of dramatic television, devouring 16 novels on Elizabethan times with compulsion or faithfully following the programming of NPR, I am a consumer of stories. I invest myself recklessly into fictional characters, as determined to know them as if I was a close friend. Not because I'm in need of a companion. I have been blessed to call some of the most amazing people in the world my friends and family. Not because my life is horrible. I understand that I have so much to be thankful for: health, material goods, a job that I love. I'm not even looking to create a place to belong. I have a home which is a safe space - and people to share it with.
I'm looking for myself. I'm trying to discover my narrative.
I can sing every word of Hamilton and identify with the heroes and the villains. I see a part of myself as a little of every character of Everyone's Son - part crack addict mother, part abandoned child, part mourning foster mom, part judge. I can see how people's stories weave together into fabrics of community and how each thread, whether made of brilliant scarlet silk or fraying burlap, makes a tapestry lovely to behold. But what I can not see, is me.
The many hats I wear give schedule and structure to my day. Wake up a mom, go be a professor, be a friend during lunch, be a consultant late afternoon, be a mom again through dinner, be a lover to my husband. Then sleep. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat.
When the hats are removed, I'm naked. Ghost like. Translucent.
My husband and I go hiking and on every trail, there is one perfect moment. There is a moment when I am surrounded by nature and the woods are alive. The birds are chirping and squirrels are skittering up and down trees. The leaves rustle in the wind and the sun shines through the leaves giving a brightness to the forest floor. Everything around me is alive. And that is enough. Mosses and mushrooms, caterpillars and spiders, trees and vines....all alive. Breathing and basking in that moment. For some it will be measured in days. For some the years will come and go, and yet they will remain.
For me, in that moment, I can simply breath and know that I don't need more of a purpose than to exist in the moment. I am nothing. And that's okay.
Some people live their life as a part of a jigsaw puzzle. Utterly unique, but integral to a bigger picture. The edges, nooks and curves allow them to perfectly connect to the pieces around them, and only in that form does their unique shape, size and color become a picture. Most people find that blend of uniqueness and belonging a place of certainty and strength. But my whole life I've been looking for something else. I've been looking for a world without hats. Without structure. Without metrics. A life where simply the act of filling my lungs is enough.
To live within the communal expectation, constantly at odds with the reality of my soul and the normality required of me, is exhausting. Keeping the will to search for myself, rather that settle for being defined by my routine, is not an easy task. But the very act of searching, these words I craft right now, are a narrative all my own. And for now, that will have to be enough.
