The Experience of Living

Experience is a wonderful thing. It brings with it the comfort that eventually, even after the darkest of times, things will be fine once again. Heartache goes away, solitude is an illusion and despair becomes a creation of a mind briefly broken. On a different day, a darker one, I would have said that I have had the hardest of lives, that this is not fair. This day, not a particularly bright one, I realise I have lived more than most, but not enough, and that is just perfect. Because the moment I have lived enough, that is the moment when living is done. And yes, growing older has been a blessing, I would never want to be ten years younger, but it is what those ten years, those thirty one years have given me, that make the experience of living all the more gratifying. 

A few years back, not ten or twenty just a few, I would not have seen beyond the darkness. In fact I didn't. I would have given up the wonder-and despair-each day brings because of a single moment of pain, just because my mind was not looking to the sun. And the wonderful thing is, I did not give up, somehow, I kept going, and I have never been so grateful for my strength. Now, like recently, the dark times come and I live them, and they take over, and they make me sour and dark, they briefly make the ending seem appealing, but then experience, and the little pains and joys, ring at the back of my head and I somehow know there is so much living to do, there is brightness, and calm and the peace of books. And yes, there is heartache, but there is writing, and so much loving. 

And after some days of darkness and self doubt, of wondering, after so many lovers why am I still alone?After I look around and there are children and wedding bells all around me.  And it all makes me feel like the odd one out. But then the darkness lifts and who cares? I don't. I remember my legacy goes beyond that. I may not achieve what I set out to do when I was a teenager, all full of fantasies, but I am living the life I want, the life I can. My priorities have changed from the seventeen year old who left home and had her future planned before her, I left. I chose to let whatever came my way make me choose. I left easy for unknown. And I owe unknown my character, my strength, my wits. I may not have the status, the life or the money easy would have provided but I don't regret my choices. I do not regret any of my choices. The lovers I had, what I studied, the jobs I had. They all, all of them, even in their darkness, led me to this moment. A simple moment, when it is not dark, it is not bright, but I am over it, over them, over all, I am me.

I will achieve what I am meant to achieve, because it is in me, and the rest, be it love or fame, it will come if it has to.