One of my favorite sounds is rain outside of my window at night.
And not the pussy bitch drizzle kind, what a tease.
Real rain, pounding, slamming, thunderous, lightning, apocalyptic storms of rain. Sinners in the hands of an angry God, rain. Build an ark, rain.
The kind of rain that means something.
Like it's trying to tell you something in the middle of the night, the meaning of life or how to divide by zero or what God looks like or where Amelia Earhart actually is or something crazy and unknowable like that.
That kind of rain.
It's gorgeous.
It's perfect.
And if I didn't have the flu or if I didn't have any inhibitions, I would go out there and stand in it and get soaked and the rain could pound on me and melt away everything I don't like about myself and every fear I have and every worry and every weakness and everything that makes me angry and vulnerable and broken and everything I'm not sure of and everything that's ever hurt me would wash away and flow through me and over me and out of me and go away down down down through the drains and into the streams and into the ocean where they would get lost forever and never come back.
Like a baptism.
Like a catharsis. A rebirth. Something.
And then I would come out fresh and clean and new.
Like metamorphosis. Like a butterfly.
No, but not a butterfly though. Butterflies are fleeting and fragile and pretty and they alight on things and sip nectar and don’t last.
I want this to last. I want it to be like metamorphic rock, where I go in and then the pressure and heat swells all around me until I can't take it and I writhe around twist and fold in on myself and swell and almost explode and I have to change and melt into something completely new, and scrubbed raw, ripped out of my old skin, and so aware and ready and sure of herself, and stronger, and harder, and better than I was before.
Lately, for some reason, I've been looking for change. Not more for change, rather to change. Change within me, to become a better person I guess.
Ever since 2011 started, I’ve been working harder, planning my life down to the hour, week by week, figuring things out, making goals, drinking 8 glasses of water a day, eating healthy, studying more and harder (studying, at all really), taking the stairs, exercising, volunteering, getting things done, keeping busy, and all that.
I’ve been scheduling my life to graduate a year early with either a triple major, single minor, or a double major double minor, English/Pols and Spanish/Arabic or just triple in the three and minor in Arabic. I’ve dedicated this summer to researching child welfare in third world countries and next summer to a study abroad in Morocco and an intensive Arabic learning semester there, too. At some point I want to do something in Latin America or Oxford, I want to do an internship, I want to do Teach For America after I graduate from UGA, before I go to law school. I need to get a job at some point, to pay for all of the stuff I do.
I want to do so much, but, the scariest part is…I don’t quite know why. On some level, I’m aware that doing things, doing stuff, having stuff, will benefit me in the future, I know being accomplished with all these things on my resume will get me somewhere, eventually. Everything I want to do is something I love, yes. But I don’t know…the terrifying part is, do I do anything because I want to? Or because I want to impress the world and society and be a part of the system?
Does free will even exist?
Do I want to go to law school? Or did I choose that because I want success in my life? Do I even want success or do I just want to prove myself to everyone around me? Do I want to play success, act it, or do I actually want it? Do I really want to help people, or do I just know I should? Am I a good person at all? What is a good person anyway?
When you’re young, like me, you have a million dreams and you want to be somebody, and you want to be rich, and you want to be famous, and you want to show up everyone who doubted you growing up, and everyone who was ever mean to you, everyone who ever made you feel small, every college or job that rejected you, you want to make up for every failure you ever had by proving to everyone that you can be incredible. And then you grow up, and life happens, and you settle, and nothing really amazing happens in your life, but no one really cares because no one’s really hot shit either. And then everyone is in the same mediocre boat for forever. And then you die, and no one gives two squirts of piss about who you were.
Basically, I have no effing idea what I want right now. What I want from life is to be happy, to look back and have had a million happy experiences, I want to be loved and love and do what I love.
I’ll figure out what it all means I guess, along the way. Maybe life is the experience. Maybe you’re supposed to live it in order to figure it out, instead of living it because you figured it out.
Maybe you have to let it wash over you and accept the shape it takes and let it flow through you.
I don’t know anything at all, I’m beginning to realize.
When the wind picks up and leaves and sticks and dust blow all around me and I can’t see or breathe, that’s when I realize that I don’t matter at all.
