Waiting for a start

I have always, essentially, been waiting. Waiting to become something else, waiting to be that person I always thought I was on the verge of becoming, waiting for that life I thought I would have. In my head, I was always one step away. In high school, I was biding my time until I could become the college version of myself, the one my mind could see so clearly. In college, the post-college “adult” person was always looming in front of me, smarter, stronger, more organized. Then the married person, then the person I’d become when I'd have kids. The the person I'd become after surviving this horrible divorce. The person I'll become once I shed my old skin. Waiting to see what will be of my heart after it has fallen into the wrong hands. Waiting to see if someone worthy of my love, would realize that I too am truly worthy of being loved. God knows I am tired of being used and drained and I pour my soul into people and their dreams and all they need from me, only to still be alone and live life alone and struggle alone? I have given my love to the point of running on empty. Yet... my heart keep loving and I keep pushing and I keep hoping, because I, am, waiting...

And through all that waiting, here I am. My life is passing, day by day, and I am waiting for it to start. I am waiting for that time, that person, that event when my life will finally begin. I love movies about “The Big Moment” the game or the performance or the wedding day or the record deal, the stories that split time with that key event, and everything is re-framed, before it and after it, "because it has changed everything". I have always wanted this movie worthy event, something that will change everything and grab me out of this waiting game into the whirlwind in front of me. I cry and cry at these movies, because I am still waiting for my own big moment. I had visions of life as an adventure, a thing to be celebrated and experienced, but all I was doing was going to work and coming home, and that wasn’t what it looked like in the movies.

John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” For me, life is what was happening while I was busy waiting for my big moment. 

Life is a collection of a million, billion moments, tiny little moments and choices, like a handful of luminous, glowing pearl. It takes so much time, and so much work, and those beads and moments are so small, and so much less fabulous and dramatic than the movies. But this is what I’m finding, in glimpses and flashes: this is it. This is it, in the best possible way. That thing I’m waiting for, that adventure, that move score worthy experience unfolding gracefully. This is it. Normal, daily life ticking by on our streets and sidewalks, in our houses and apartments, in our beds and at our dinner tables, in our dreams and prayers and fights and secrets, this pedestrian life is the most precious thing any of us will ever experience.

Far too long have I waited, have I been patient, I have allowed time to slip by... It's time to not worry about where is that moment that changes everything, but focus on this moment being the reason I become the one who changes everything!