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But it can't be.
That sits like an eerie thought on my conscious, especially after this weekend of coming back home to family and my boyfriend after a couple of hard, particularly lonely weeks at college. I don't live in the now. I pretend to, I convince myself that I do, but I don't. I never have. I live somewhere between the past and the future. However, that place isn't the present. I don't know where it is. It's like a limbo where I fantasize and fear obsessively about the past and future.
For the longest time, my surroundings were dull and dead. I could hardly hear and see things around me. Every day was like a dreamy haze. Yet when I came back home this weekend, everything was so real and tangible. My sister's laugh, my dad's smile, the green grass, the sound of traffic, my boyfriend's voice, the feel of his skin and hair, how it sounds when he says, "I love you."
I've been having my doubts about college. It makes me feel trapped, like I'm following some societal expectations of success, and it highlights how lonely I can get because it's so big and I'm so tiny. So at first when I realized how much brighter things had gotten when I returned home, I began to consider that maybe I should just transfer to the college near my house.
I realized that wasn't what this new appreciation of my surroundings and emotions meant, though. It took a momentary scare from my boyfriend to make me realize just how badly I need to cherish the now. But...I don't know HOW to do that.
I think that's the saddest part. Being in love is great because it forces a person to live in the moment, in the now...yet I still don't really truly know how to. And I'll be damned if I don't learn. I just need the people in my life, the ones I love, to stick with me a little bit longer while I learn. It'll be hard. I don't have just college to worry about. I have a business and a novel too.
I'll try if you try with me.
Beautiful post, Tiffany. I'm still trying to figure out how to live in the now, too. I'll tell you, it's hard, because my career now consists of always thinking about the future. Future books, future publishing deadlines, future covers, future marketing, future everything. Sometimes it's really difficult to sit down and write a book and lose myself in the now of that story - to remember why I write in the first place.
Then there's my life outside of writing. Mostly, there's my daughter I hang out with all day, every day. She truly helps me understand the now. She's only 5, but she sure does understand how intense life should be all the time. She lives NOW. She doesn't worry about the future. Ever. It's amazing to watch, really. When she stubs her toe, there is no thinking about the pain going away. It's just NOW. Pain NOW. It will NEVER go away because it's only NOW. And that's why she cries so desperately hard and needs me to hold her so tightly.
I think about these things whenever I get depressed about things - my book sales, getting a house, another car so I won't be stuck at home forever, keeping friends and family happy, paying off debt. Life is filled with so many unknowns that there's often only the present that can keep us happy. Planning for the future is essential, but we'll never be happy in that future unless we learn how to be happy in its past.
Totally gonna qoute that last sentence on FB. But yeah, I'm still naively adamant that publication and getting this business off the ground will be the key to at least ridding myself of some of my silly internal fears, even though I know it won't be the key. It'll probably open one cage just to lock me into another, and maybe my whole life will be spent in cages of different shades and sizes. But I don't want to believe that because I'm a dreamer.
On another note, I did get the camera. It's an olympus FE-4020. I'm charging it right now, though I'm about to stop too early because I'll need to be leaving for college in a bit.
Ooo, exciting about the camera! You will love that. :)
And yes, publishing is like having kids. There's always pros and cons to every stage of their lives - but the point is that there are always cons. The grass is never greener. It just shifts where it's at.