My life lesson.
I grew up with this attitude. As a child I cared about nothing. I would coast through life on a wave of apathy all through school and adolescence. I wouldn’t show up for class, I was increasingly ambivalent to the point where if there was something that needed a decision I just wouldn’t do it. I made no effort with making friends, if my dad hadn’t been a single parent who needed me to play sports as a form of daycare i’m pretty sure nobody would have known who I was. My entire world was bland. I would sit in my room, stare at the ceiling, and waited for something to turn a color for me. I went to bed every night waiting and woke up every morning in the same grayscale world. So there I was, growing up with no passion and no motivation. Something a doctor couldn’t give me a pill for, and two emotions a therapist could never talk my way into discovering.
I’ve lived day by day for twenty-six years, tearing out pages in my journals which seemed to be an encyclopedia of The Art of Getting By. Because thats what I was doing, I was just getting by. Relationships were like colorful thunderstorms for me. It never called for rain every single day, but when it did it was always a reminder that I needed to find passion for myself outside of being with somebody. I started abusing being in a relationship just to feel something. I stopped caring who it was with, I just needed to see green, and blue, and red, and orange, and purple. Then suddenly it stopped, and this flourishing rainforest I built that depended on relationships vastly turned into the Mojave desert overnight.
I needed to get my shit together. I needed to know if this is what my next twenty-six years is going to be like. Am I going to continue pandering around waiting, waiting for passion to find me, waiting to see if finally doctors can prescribe motivation. Then waiting became extra weight. The longer I waited, the heavier everything felt. I expected the world to come to me in this convenient sized box with easy to open packaging and sealed with a pretty bow just for my usage. Sadly, the world does not come like that. Nor can you get one delivered to you, despite what Google says.
I made a choice, something I never thought my indecisive self could do. I decided unanimously, if the world can’t come to me and hasn’t came to me yet, then i’m not going to continue to wait for it - i’m going to the world. I packed my bags, my relationship ended, I said goodbye to dependency and comfort and this constant rotation of regularity and got on a plane. I almost walked out of the terminal three times to call my dad to come pick me back up. I made laps around the airport talking myself out, and I sat in a bathroom stall balling my eyes for an hour. But once I stopped crying, left the bathroom, and started walking down the corridors, everything was in color. That moment was like throwing a giant bolder into a pond. The waves of clarity and the complete disturbance of my once two tone colored world was now radiant. Saturated.
Even though I wasn’t ready for the world, the world was ready for me. And you really can’t argue with my mother nature, she gets what she wants, and I was ready to give it to her. I broke my own prison. I’m lighter, i’m no longer waiting, and I refuse to go back to grayscale. I got too many crayons in my pocket now. I’m ready to start painting violet, and baby blue, and atomic tangerine, and cinnamon, and magenta.
