wiser by the hour

It rained today after months of drought. At first it was only a few raindrops, but enough for my sister to call out to me to come outside and breathe in that petrichor. We squeaked with delight. Even getting a notification on my phone that it might rain later was enough to bring me joy.

I stayed in my room to read and enjoy the first rainy day in a while. The smile grew on my face as I heard more rain outside my window, until I remembered my clothes were still outside on a rack drying. Then it wasn’t funny anymore.

By afternoon, my train of thought took a different turn. I must have been spending too much time staring out the window for those dark clouds to form. That damn window…

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I don’t put dates in my journal. Everything is one big script in black ink, page after page of neural pathways that run into a dead end and reroute to find another. Days and months spilled into one, so my journal reflects that. That’s why you couldn’t tell how much time had passed between one line on the paper and the next.

There was a lot of silence there, a pen that was staining the paper in one spot where it was stuck. That ink spill was the quiet of a time wasted.

I’m how the wind blows. A little there, and then nowhere. Very early, I let others’ ideas guide me until I lost my way. All these pointers were meant to be a passing compliment. Maybe an encouragement. And I drew the map according to them.

To noone’s fault, either. It was my own doing. I couldn’t recognize passing interests from life aims. I took that first step and thought I ascended the staircase.

So, what I need right now isn’t an escape into yet another fantasy. What I need is to sharpen the edges of my reality, so I never confuse where I’m going and never lose sight of where I’m actually headed.

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