On a cool Saturday afternoon in what used to be a great country, in a city that was once at the heartbeat of fire, I was cleaning an oven. Cleaning is a clever disguise for pain so ancient that it could trick people into believing that the harder you cleaned the better you felt. I always thought if I could pull the dark thoughts into my hands that the cleaning products would wash them away, distracting me from pondering more about them. On this particular Saturday, I had planned to meet some friends for lunch, but no matter how much I dusted or brushed, the darkness weighed me down. There was no washing it away. The cold grip of death felt close and no amount of cleaning could resolve that.

The inner struggles and the emotional traumas that I had kept under wraps for weeks had decided that today was their day. My carefully locked gates were about to open whether I wanted them to or not. After a second attempt at the oven, I gave up and got dressed.  I scratched through my handbag making sure that I had everything, and then made my way to the car.  I took a deep breath and drove the six and a half minutes to the restaurant and as I parked the car, my phone chimed to a message notifying me of a late arrival. It shouldn’t have been too much of a problem. I could easily turn around and drive six and a half minutes back to the house and leave later but I didn’t want to go home. Because on this cool Saturday afternoon my house was a battlefield of emotions that I could not escape. 

The waiting aggravated me, the annoyance of reading the news on my phone increased my chagrin. It kept hitting me like bricks, purposefully marching on my chest. By the time lunchtime came and my friends arrived, they met a tired and absent me. They represented everything that had haunted me for weeks – a future about to be lost. Perhaps I hoped they would be my salvation. However, how can you hope for salvation without asking for it?

So with a heavy sigh, I  tried to smile and desperately wished I had cancelled, a fatal mistake I will soon learn would spell the end of a treasured friendship. I tried to be present but my voice was listless, and couldn’t bring itself to speak with the enthusiasm my brain instructed. These people who did nothing wrong but catch in what is easily becoming a bad life not just a bad day. I couldn’t even share of all the things that had cumulated to this moment, I was silent not sure how to move in my own skin with my own voice. Heaviness filled the air and by the time we were done, everybody had had a miserable time. I had the poor taste to bring my bad feelings to this lunch. I had the poor taste to be breaking without a way to mend.

I often think about my 30s and the way they played out,  the mistakes I made, some dangerous, some fun, others not so much, and that time that I thought death was near.  Sometimes I sit at the edge of my dream and wonder where my life went. I also  wonder if one day, I will sit at the edge of my life and wonder where my dreams went. The way we carry ourselves in the skin we have been given in life. If we had chosen them, perhaps it wouldn’t feel so heavy.

We pull and we push,  we feel ourselves little by little, piece by piece, cracking as a person. We try to reconcile the person we are trying to be, the one we are and the one we were meant to be. I have never felt this push and pull harder than when I was in my 30s. Everyday I could feel myself bending like a figure eight, trying to match the different strands that each person in my life had weaved. 

The failed expectations of the father, the last hopes of the mother, the tortured longings of the siblings, the broken-hearted disappointments of the best friend, the militant hard lines of the colleagues and the troubled temptations of the lovers. Each strand carefully dancing at the edge of a life in transition. When I think about my 30s, there at the edge of my dreams wondering, which of these strands sit next to each other? Can I weave them into something new and beautiful? Something that would be perfect, happy and always amiable. Something that resembles a life well lived and when I am done, who would have determined this life? 

Pulling strands from myself in matching unison, with different strands given by others.  What are the dreams of this life that have been woven into place by the hopes, dreams and expectations of so many people? Can anyone truly tell who it is woven for? 

When I sit at that edge of my life and wonder where my dreams went, wonder whose dreams I’m longing for and how they came to be. Did I dream it or was it dreamed for me? Maybe then, finally that creature in the shadows of my life will  step out and tell me the story of who I am and how I got here