It’s a warm Sunday afternoon, I’m sitting in a coffee shop, and I’m wondering where the summer has gone. The Fourth of July is over. Soon, I’ll catch the color of a leaf changing as I walk my dog or go for a run. I should be happy about that. I love Fall.
But I still have so much to get done this year. An impossible amount.
Where do I even begin?
I suppose I begin with what I know best: writing. Specifically writing out everything I’m currently thinking and feeling. I’ve spent the past four days alone in my house, barely interacting with anyone who isn’t a four-legged furball named Falkor.
That’s my dog, FYI.
The last month has been rough, to say the least. No, that was not a dog pun.
It started with a week of exhaustion followed by a week of being unable to sleep due to pain and tension that seemed to travel up and down one side of my face. This pain would eventually concentrate in the bottom left of my jaw, and I would discover I have a deep infection in the roots of a molar I previously had filled.
The tooth itself is apparently dead now, but that didn’t stop it from causing the most unmanageable pain I’ve ever experienced. I found myself face-planting into my bed, grabbing fists full of sheets as my muffled screams were mostly swallowed by my mattress.
The worst of the pain only lasted two days, and a few doses of antibiotics killed the remaining discomfort and swelling. But just as I thought the worst was over, I came down with a particularly brutal cold, accompanied by the full list of symptoms. Was this related to the infection? A response to the antibiotics? The wrath of God for sins I left unrepented?
I’ll never know.
What I do know is the cold is all but gone, my teeth are back to normal, and I feel like I can finally move forward.
That should be a good thing. It is a good thing.
Still, I can’t shake this fear of what could come next. I feel like I’ve lost a month of my life with one thing after another. All the habits I’ve been working on this year have fallen into the wayside, as I’ve given into my worst tendencies, and even as I begin to climb out of this pit, it’s like I’m tensed up, waiting for something to knock me back down.
I feel broken, and in my experience, broken people tend to break themselves further. The desire is there. To press on the cracks until they shatter. To believe that my life is chaos and misfortune, and the actions I take won’t change that, so I might as well indulge myself in misery, instant gratification, and cheap excuses.
But I know that’s a lie.
Yes, uncontrollable events are an inevitability of life, as is pain, sickness, heartbreak, and everything in between. But the only way to guarantee that your life will be miserable is to believe and accept that it will be.
I can’t. I won’t.
As one of my favorite movies says, “it can’t rain all the time.”
I told myself this as I grabbed my computer and setout to get some work done today. Because today, for the first time in a while, I feel that I actually can.
I don’t know what the rest of this week will bring, but I believe it will be better than last week. It’s a low bar, but it’s enough. I am enough. A bad month will not convince me otherwise.
If anything, I feel more motivated than I have in sometime.
As I reread this post, I think of a cute/dumb title, and I add it to the top. I smile, and for the first time in far too long, I feel genuinely good inside. It’s funny. I’ve created so many things, and yet I so quickly forget how good it feels afterwards. I suppose I’ll have to do it more frequently.
With that, it’s time to get to work. The summer is almost over, and there’s so much left to do.
