Written to someone who [I hope] will never find this blog much less recognize themselves in this.

When we talk, I try to stifle every cliche question that would elicit preset promises that neither of us are able to fill. And yet I find that they creep out when I am not paying attention. Why haven't we talked sooner? Why not more often? 

Even the subtle statement of fact builds promises like containers which we ourselves will fall into when they have been left empty long enough. We should get better at this.

It's been years since we last talked, but I shouldn't tell you that when you call next. At this point, every phone call takes a week's worth of courage and a month's worth of guilt. Every phone call is expensive and it is not my right to make it cost even more.

Neither of us really remember how we got here. Well, we do but we didn't know what would happen then.

Robert Frost should have wrote, "Two trillion roads diverged in a yellow wood" and I took one that you didn't take. And you took one that wasn't even close to mine. And now, we are trying to bridge a distance not imagined by poet, scholar, or us. But for a while, a long long time ago, we shared a road and that has made all the difference.

At least, I hope it makes a difference.

"Exhale."

I am on the other side of graduation. I said goodbye to my family a few hours ago and now it is just me in my apartment. I poured some bath water. I listened to the rain. All the lights are off and I can finally hear the pace of my own breathing.

It's hard to do just one thing sometimes.

And by sometimes I mean...most of the time. Even now. Bite of carrot. Bit of thought. Type, type, type.

I have been looking forward to this after-graduation-time for awhile. I have doubted its coming and yet it came. Now that it is here, I am aware of other things stirring. I expected change. Something else has my attention though.

I really want to settle into a life of my own that runs at a pace that I could keep for more than a season. I want to recharge and start some healthy habits that have long been waiting. I want to move slower than before. And so, with this change I keep trying to peek around the corner to see if this just may be a good space to transition into that life. If there will be time enough for the life I want or if I still have to work to get to that place. Is it time? Is it possible?

Here in the dark and the rain, I think I hear the rumble and rustle of new labors. I am a little bit saddened by this. It's not the life I'm trying to get to. And yet...

I don't really know.

Just, "and yet..."
Perhaps, it is 'yet I dream and I breathe and I wake up for all of the tomorrows that will hopefully take me closer to where I want to be' [hopefully].

It is hard to accept the evidence I feel. It's not what I want, but I know it to be true somewhere past all the places that my will penetrates. This is not the season I wanted, but this season will be good. I will struggle through it, but at least I will know that this is the way that life is supposed to feel [for a time].

I am quite uncertain about where I am now headed, but I am approaching something new at a rapid rate. Here's to hoping I can still make good on the promises I made myself in the last few months of surviving.