The future of me

The future starts in our minds. 

We have the most wonderful faculty between our ears — our imagination — that allows us to create, solve problems, and sometimes literally see into the future. 

The future of me is a bleak prospect. I have endured tremendous setbacks and unimaginable pain in the last few years (with no one to blame but myself). As I lick my wounds, it's almost too easy to try to imagine my way out of this small place in which I've found myself. This is the key to my survival. I have to imagine a better future for myself and then believe in it. 

There was a time in my nascent youth when I loved to draw. My artistic abilities were slightly above average, but I didn't pursue drawing because I saw a future in it. I just loved it. And all drawings start with a sketch, a few tentative lines at first and then bolder as the image takes shape. Before anything is put down on paper, however, it starts in the artist's imagination.

The future of me is a blank sheet of paper. I'm staring at it now. I don't know how to start the sketch. I move the paper around in the morning light. I put it away. I take it out again at night, gently rolling a pencil in my fingers. I sigh. I look at the ceiling. I stare through the blank walls of my apartment. My gaze moves to the window, across the tops of buildings, and into the naked sky. I put the paper away again. 

There is a toughness in swallowing unexpected setbacks. There is a bitterness in it. It goes into your very joints, into the depth of your bones, into the factories that churn out your lifeforce — your blood. The setbacks have come in a steady fashion, like a parade. I sit and wait on the shore of this pounding sea for another angry wave and hope this one will topple me, carry me out to sea, and drown me. I simply cannot handle another setback. So I sit, paralyzed and waiting, fearful sometimes to even open my eyes. I'm waiting for something good to happen, perhaps a reminder that life isn't all bad. 

My mind, perhaps in a bid to protect itself from more trauma, has sealed off my imagination. I cannot go into that wonderful, powerful part of my being. I cannot imagine any future for myself right now. A heavy load of pain bears down on all of me, threatening to crush the very life from my lungs. It's both a blessing and a curse to feel so deeply. When I gain something, I feel it like lightning. When I lose something, it's doubly worse. Until this pain lifts, I cannot imagine anything for myself. And I desperately need to start this next sketch.

No one is going to rescue me from this necessary task of sorting through pain. Nothing is going to prevent me from feeling it, not even the passing of time. But, if there's anything I know, it's pain. And I know it will eventually end. And I'll forget all about it. Until then, I'll keep rattling my key in the lock of my imagination in hopes I can get it open and working again. 

Someday, a future will take shape. That piece of paper will have lines on it, and it will look like something. It may not be my actual future, but it will symbolize what I desperately need right now — hope.