I hope I haunt you too

There’s a quote I read and loved but can’t recall where it came from. It reads: “Intellectually I understand it. But I can’t seem to make peace with it.” A lot of this year has felt like that for me. I like to solve things. Fix them. Cross them out. But life doesn’t work like that. And answers don’t come in neatly defined boxes, if they even come at all.

Like most people in these unpredictable circumstances, in the absence of control I find myself turning to the stars, the gods and other portends for comfort. I’m always throwing questions out to the universe hoping for some clarity. But the answer is always silence. You’ve got to save yourself, kid. Somethings you just have to learn to live with and walk alongside.

And that has been my message and my mission for this year: to live a full life in spite of the reoccurring sadness that so often sits in your stomach and seeps in through the creases and cracks caused by too much stillness. To make peace with the fact that existing will always be like this: a little lopsided, often unfair and almost always challenging.

The joy of it all, I think, hides between the discomfort. In those moments of absolute aliveness, fleeting and finite as they may be, where we feel wholly understood and accepted. When it feels easy, organic. When existence sings in our synapses and sinew, and the sheer delight of it all leaves us slightly delirious. And even when it’s over, a glow of goodness remains. The ending will always come and we probably won’t and will never understand why it had to, but maybe we don’t have to. To have lived it is enough.

Hi, I’m Lauren and I’m a writer and artist. You can follow more of my work on my Instagram and find all my products, designs and (honestly) always kinda emo art in my art store.