A Moment of Clarity

Memoir, Personal Essay

In April of 2012, I peddle towards home after work and school. It is just like any other spring afternoon with the flowers, trees and air singing with life and blossoms.  I’ve been in school for a few months and am working as a writing tutor – a job I love more and more every day. As I walk up stairs to my apartment, my bike on my shoulder, I so am lost in reverie that keys materialize in my hand.

I unlock and open the door. As I set my bike down and push it inside, I catch a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror. I pause for a moment, studying my eyes and face, and think, “all I want to do is write, everything else is a distraction.” I decide right then and there to rededicate myself and my life to writing.

With this thought I suddenly feel three years of tension and economic desperation release from my life. This tension had been a constant pressure on my brain, heart and skin, squeezing me from the inside and outside at the same time. It made my hair follicles hurt and my back hunch. It made my cells cling to one another desperately or else shatter into billions of pieces, a cloud of fine dust to be scattered by the wind.

“All I want to do is write…” echoes, washing this tension, this pressure, off my skin. I watch it drip to the floor, then ooze away through the cracks. It’s interesting to watch life come full circle. After a few loops through the bog of the recession, my circle, my calling as a writer, reconnects. I’ve been writing my whole life, seriously for about ten years, but I put all my dreams on hold while battling the recession. It’s interesting to see what happens when you are gutted, cleaned of labels and baggage and ten year plans, because what’s left is your core and calling.

Wife and dog exploring the dreamscape that is the Oregon coast.

It’s scary to face our fears. We’ve all heard this. It’s even scarier to face our dreams because within our dreams wait our calling and purpose. Our whole body yearns for these dreams, is urged towards them, a thoroughbred shivering in the starting gate. But, when we resist our dreams, when the starting gate drops, we back up instead. Then, when haunches hit the back of the stall we feel cornered and panic, thrashing in an attempt to exit in any direction except forward.

I can never live like that, cornered and claustrophobic, fear of the unknown controlling my life. Dreams keep me hopeful. Dreams sustain and nourish me. Chasing our dreams, creating something from nothing, is why we are put on this planet.