Pushing Off

Sometimes, I feel so fortunate to have been granted the gift of life, the privilege to see and hear and feel and smell and taste and whirl myself around in my beautiful universe and think: 

Isn’t it wonderful that I am here instead of never having been here?

Sometimes that’s enough, just to be, and have been, and the improbability of that is sufficient to fill my cup.

Sometimes, it's not. In the endless, exhausting interview that is constructing meaning from life, gratitude for being alive when I could have easily never been born doesn’t go down easily. It doesn’t penetrate my anger or sorrow or hopelessness in the times when the world looks irredeemably ugly and so do I.

Perhaps I should provide an example:

For many years, I had a cat. She died this year. 

With her death came a bittersweet realization: that her presence had been a crucial steadying force. She had consistently reminded me that my sour customers, my ever-present check-engine light, and my guilt about going to Burger King for the third time this week could only matter so much.

As long as I had my home and my place with her, I felt good.

Then she was gone, and without her my home became a place where she used to be and no longer was. I suddenly didn't know what mattered and what didn’t. I felt structure-less, even self-less. I was frozen, floating in nothing.

These feelings managed to stir up an even more distressing thought: my cat was old, and her death was not a tragedy. If I felt this way when she died, how would I react to the other losses I would undoubtedly have in the future?

This thought did not help.

I was now ready for something truly horrible to happen – what that was, exactly, remained nebulous – and was certain I would collapse from within when it did. In that moment, telling myself that feeling sorrow and fear was better than never having existed at all did nothing to comfort or even unfreeze me.

What happens when there's nothing to push off from, or even swim to? How do you start moving again, when now feels unbearable, when unbearable feels never-ending? How do you recreate the place that makes meaning from the life you have been given?

We put life back together again and again. In the face of real tragedy, I’m certain to collapse from within, but the principle is the same: I will re-find and re-build that resting place, where I can find myself.

Here's where I pushed off: “Don’t be afraid, and don’t be stupid.”

You've likely seen this before, repeated in breast cancer forums, or maybe on a poster hung in a locker room. I've repeated it to myself during every turning point, when I felt I had nothing to push off from. It never fails to drain the frozen dread that percolates so automatically, leaving a shiny cavity, clear and sharp. 

A few months ago, I took a cat home from the shelter. She’s older, and a bit particular, but I think she’s made herself comfortable. This hasn't replaced my sorrow (or my fear of a true tragedy) but I have something to belong to, a settling place, a place that says I remember. This is who I am.

So is this my new meaning? My cat dies and I get another one?

Movement - taking the first step - is the only way this happened. You pick a direction, swim in the nothing until you find something to grab and when that fails, you grab something else.

I know that someday, the world will feel permanently irredeemable, and I hope I will find a way to remember that it's not. I hope I find a place to push off, when that time comes for me.

I hope I talk to the right people, that I don't stay still for so long that movement becomes impossible.

I hope I remember that now is never infinite, even when every cell in my body is telling me that it is.

I hope.