I haven't posted on a Thursday in a while. As the title explains, Thursdays are reserved for deep thinking. Yet, I don't sit down and make myself think of a topic at a specific time or for a certain period of time; the thought process just happens, and bizarre as it is, usually on a Thursday. Perhaps, being closer to the end of the week, Thursday happens to be when all my thoughts reach the brim of what I can keep in internally, and a deluge of emotion is released. Whatever the scientific reasoning, I know that writing down my thoughts (preferably with a pen and paper) is much more therapeutic to my being than keeping everything in or explaining how I'm feeling to others verbally.
For most of the East Coast, today's forecast ain't lookin' too good. Showers upon showers, grey cloud after grey cloud, and a lowering of the recently high temperature. Personally, I love rainy days as much as sunny ones. The type and amount of rain really does determine everything for my day. On days like today, when the sun will never get the chance to peek through the clouds to say hello, I find myself either extremely motivated to work on my future, or extra nostalgic for all things, places, and people past. Somehow though, my reasoning always takes me back to square one and the need to focus on the current moment.
This morning I decided to give Bon Iver another chance. I most certainly do not have anything against their talent; more so, this particular band reminds me of a very lost time in my life. Listening to any of the songs from the second album hits a switch in my brain, signaling that I should probably cry rivers and let snot fall from my nose like a waterfall. I most certainly am a sight when I cry, as I'm sure most of us all are.
Why do I always cry, you wonder? I cry because I think of when I first started listening to the album. I was stressed out and exhausted and emotional. It was the week before Halloween and I was in charge of the school party. My computer died and I had no money nor insurance to fall back on in case of this quite normal circumstance. (Whose computer hasn't died on them before?) I had to rewrite all of my lesson plans, figure out Halloween games that were appropriate for three- to eleven-year-olds, prepare to have my classroom skills evaluated by the head of the English department, and return to the Préfecture to wait in line for my carte de séjour (which in the end, I never received). I immediately thought my life was awful, that I had the worst luck in the world, that I was having the worst week ever; the complaints continue. I had no idea what was coming. These were mere trivialities, arriving in one go, but trivialities nonetheless. The Apple staff in Lyon helped reprogram my computer for free. I made new lesson plans. Our school had its most successful Halloween party yet. I passed my evaluation with flying colors and received wonderful recommendations to even further improve my teaching skills. After four hours, I even received a new récépissé from the Préfecture. I made it through the week.
And then I received a call late at night. I didn't even hear my mom's voice before I realized why she was calling. My Mom-Mom was gone.
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| Image courtesy of SlideShare |
It will already be a month ago tomorrow that my Grandad passed away. This time death didn't come so suddenly, but it came and went nonetheless, taking another person I love and look up to, away. The weeks leading up to his death, I repeatedly listened to a song by Lord Huron, that now will be timestamped with those same feelings expressed earlier. One day last month, I called my Dad and explained how I felt too comfortable at my job, how I needed a new challenge, how I wanted to explore the world some more but didn't know where to start, and how I didn't know where exactly I wanted my life to go. Significant to one person, trivial compared to the entirety of the universe. A week after this phone call, my Dad courageously flew out to be with my Grandad while his spirit cautiously passed into the sky. Ever since, I've felt extremely guilty of even complaining about my life, of thinking, again, I had it bad; not because of my Grandad dying, but because I wasn't focusing on and recognizing each current moment as special, unique, and absolutely needed to prepare oneself for the future. Death always seems to reiterate the difference between the three tenses: past, present, and future.
Worrying about what is or is not to come is something we all struggle with, and I'm nowhere near achieving the ability to overcome that; but, I do try to remind myself that in the end, we must learn to trust our guts before allowing our reason to overtake each individual circumstance. On the same note, we can't wait around for anything to happen. Waiting produces more worry, more over thinking, more anxiety where anxiety has no place, yet or maybe even ever. We all need to dance, run, walk, do cartwheels, draw, write, or even take up the recorder again. We can't look back and worry about what was or should have been. We must accept the present, learn from the past, and look forward to, but try not stress, about the future. Most of the time what we stress about never happens. Plus, those who we miss are still with us, whether we can physically see them or not. In the end, we're just cycling trivialities.
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| Image courtesy of SlideShare |
Until next time,
La petite pamplemousse
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