things i would like to think more about

So,​ your life. There it is before you – possibly a road, a ribbon, a dotted line, a map – let’s say you’re 25, then you make some decisions, do things, have setbacks, have triumphs, become someone, a bus driver, a professor of Indo-European linguistics, a pirate, a cosmetologist, years pass, maybe in a family maybe not, maybe happy maybe not, then one day you wake up and you’re seventy. Looking ahead you see a black doorway. You begin to notice the black doorway is always there, at the edge, whether you look at it or not. Most moments contain it, most moments have a sort of sediment of black doorway at the bottom of the glass. You wonder if other people are seeing it too. You ask them. They say no. You ask why. No one can tell you.

A minute ago you were 25. Then you went ahead getting the life you want. One day you looked back from 25 to now and there it is, the doorway, black, waiting.

(surprise surprise)

I've spent the last year trying to wrestle with the following questions:

Would it still have happened if I was better? (better looking certainly, but what about better at making you happy, better at making myself happy, better at all the things I think I'm shitty at and all the ways I've ever felt unlovable)

Would it still have happened if you were better? (better at thinking of me when I wasn't around, better at listening to me when I was around, better at being honest, better at telling me how your day was going)

And there are (again, unsurprisingly) no answers to be found! Even after months of all this searching. I've turned over every last rock in this dirty old head of mine.