Tag: journeys

On Stories, Journeys, Maps, and Signs

By Catherine DiMercurio

Sometimes, all we want is a sign.

Recently, I wrote a short story with a happy ending. Or, more accurately, I finally wrote the happy ending to a story I thought I was done with. I write a lot about broken relationships and wounded people who are trying to find their way toward new versions of themselves or new love. I write about them in various stages of this process. I’ve imagined people in their 20s and people in their 80s struggling with different versions of this same journey. The stories end not hopelessly, but with some acknowledgment that the journey is long, and not over.

I’d been revising this particular story, taking a fresh look at it the beginning of it for a workshop. As I worked deeper into the story, I suddenly began to see a richer ending taking shape, one that moved the characters past the moment of not being able to connect with one another. As I read the last scene I’d written, I sensed what was supposed to happen next, able now to imagine these two people drawing on the bravery they both possessed in order to be emotionally honest with one another and finally move toward one another. Maybe it’s less artful now, with its happy ending. So many short stories end in ways that leave you thinking and wondering, and maybe I still won’t be able to place it with a literary journal. It’s too soon to tell. But, either way, I feel as though I achieved something with this story.

I was not capable of writing that ending to the story before now. I could not have written it one year ago, and I certainly couldn’t have written it eight years ago. It’s not that I couldn’t envision such an ending, but I felt stuck in a way, or, unable to unstick the words from my throat. Confused about how to unravel the fibers, comprehend them, and knit them back together into meaningful sentences, though I felt all the fine threads in my hands. There were insights that eluded me, and that I didn’t know were eluding me. How often do we feel that way, that everything is right in front of us but we can’t see what we need to? So often, we make do with what we can. We show up with everything we’ve been able to make sense of and everything we haven’t, because, what else can we do?

Journeys take a long time, and often long stretches happen in the dark. It’s no wonder we want to look for signs that tell us we are on the right path, that things are coming together, that we are getting unstuck. It is easy to notice things that we hope are signs, once we are looking.

(A yellow butterfly crosses your path while a meaningful song is playing. You once again happen to glance at the clock and the time is your birthday. As passcode for a two-factor verification comes up as 123456. A moth patiently waits for you to save it from death by lightbulb and you do. On a dating app, you see a picture of a man with a crow behind him on a fencepost. You see this picture just after you’ve finished writing a story with a happy ending, a story that happens to prominently feature a crow. [Yes, I commented on his crow picture. No, he did not message me back.])

Photo by Alfonso Ramirez on Pexels.com

Often, I find myself believing that there is no “right” path. And if that’s the case, what need have I of signs to verify that I’m on it? There is no timeline, nor a single trajectory that you follow to get from one point to another, from the point of hurt to healed, over it, better. Still, sometimes we feel a sort of peace settling in over scars, like gold dust or starlight, and we feel soothed, sometimes even shining and spectacular. We can notice that things feel aligned, or balanced, or magical, if only for a moment. We can take all of this as validation that we are doing something well, even if there is no right path, no one way to go.

This bears repeating. I find my self craving answers sometimes to specific questions: should I do this thing or that? Is it the right time to take this step? And though I agonize over the details of these questions in my head, when my heart raises its voice through all that clatter it asks am I doing this right? Is this okay? Am I on the right path? Deep down, essentially, all I really want is to know what I already know. I’ve got this. I’m doing this right. Everything is going to be okay. And the feeling I get when I see the things that feel like signs to me is one of peace. The voice I hear is one telling me you’re doing well. I think I’m not actually looking for a sign that I should get back on Bumble or whatever. I simply want to know that the decisions I make – about anything – are well-fashioned out of awareness, and contemplation, and self-trust. Sometimes, what we really seek is the validation that we are doing/living/being well, and that this path or that, while not inconsequential, matters less than trusting ourselves to do what feels true and good for us.

The way forward after the low points in our lives is a blue-veined map across the surface of our souls. We follow paths that make sense at the time, and find our way back to our heart, and we leave again, replenished but uncertain about where we’re supposed to go next.

Autumn is a good season to pause, consider your surroundings. The days are getting shorter but for the moment, there is a pleasant balance between activity and restfulness, at least for a little while. When you think about the next steps you want to take, consider whether you need some time to get to know your own heart again. Take a visit back, refresh yourself. Consider too, if you’re heading out once more, that there’s no one right way. You don’t have to pursue whatever it is the world has told you should have by now. You get to do it your way, and if you find yourself looking for signs maybe it’s because you already know whatever it is you’re trying to validate.

But it’s okay to want the sign. It’s okay to crave the sight of crows settling in trees at dusk, or cardinals leading the way on your morning walk, or days when your favorite number keeps popping up everywhere. Dreams of pets who have passed, or the same old song turning up on different radio stations multiple times a day, the butterfly that lands on your shoulder or the cricket that has hitched a ride in your car. Whatever it is that strikes you as special, unusual, take in these signs and cherish them. Then figure out what it is that your heart already knows. Maybe it’s just waiting for the rest of you to catch up.

Love, Cath

On Rituals and Running and Fog

By Catherine DiMercurio

Sometimes you need five more minutes.

It’s a school morning and I wake up early to my wind-chime alarm and put the kettle on, grind the coffee beans, add them to the freshly rinsed French press pot. At six, I slip into my son’s room. “Do you want five more minutes?” He grumbles assent. I close the door.

This is a ritual, a habit, but it’s largely unnecessary. He wakes up just fine on his own. At the same time, we measure time differently now that he is a year away from leaving home for college. Less than a year, I remind myself. The days and minutes and seconds tick away in an almost palpable manner during this last school year. So, I respect the ritual.

Do you want five more minutes? Yes, I do.

I pocket this particular heartache and will tap it absentmindedly throughout the day, like a lost tooth I’ve placed close to my heart for safe-keeping.

The kettle whistles, I add a little water to the press pot, wait a minute for the grounds to “bloom,” add the rest of the water, stir, watch the clock for about four minutes, and compress the plunger and pour the first cup of Sumatra. I add a little turbinado sugar and some almond milk. I think of other people, making their coffee, and I think of their rituals, and what we absorb from the people we love. I think of the way we bloom.

After my son’s car rumbles toward school, I slip into my running gear, enjoying the ritual and familiarity of that, too, but I’m unable to stop the voice in my head chiding me that the two miles I’ll run today are nothing compared to what I used to do. Still, I lace up, and head out. It’s mid-September and the air holds both summer and fall in it. It’s humid and cool and I try to pay attention to my form, my knees, my breath. I run down streets I’ve run down for twenty years, knowing that in a year, the streets will be different, the neighborhood unfamiliar. I notice my arms doing that T-Rex thing and I focus on form again.

I see three different women walking their dogs, and I nod to each human and greet the dogs alternately with “Hi, baby,” “Hey, honey,” and “Hello, puppy.” I notice the change in the flowers as I pass by. The magenta zinnias are a bit ragged and a little fallen now, the yellow and burgundy mums in people’s yards look store-bought. Golden dahlias and those urgently pink ones remain vibrant. I finish the two-mile run on a sprint, feeling that it was a pretty good run, even though it wasn’t that fast, or that long. I feel strong, and the morning is lovely.

Sometimes I can’t quite untangle whether I’m running because I ought to, health-wise, or simply because the ritual of it brings me some kind of peace, a bit of enjoying-the-journey satisfaction that is hungry to be noticed amid complaints of too slow, and not far enough.

Sometimes there’s a lot to untangle. We want to move through life in a clear-sighted way, but we have stress and memory and obligation and politics and time and change intruding on vision and joy and love and laughter and dreams.

I’ve been disappointed about my lack of progress with my writing lately and I’ve noted it here, sometimes, feeling a bit exposed, but talking about it anyway, because we all have failures and disappointments and we may as well be honest about it. It’s hard to avoid seeing the parallels between my writing and running. I feel like the effort is there, the consistency, the focus, if not the amount of time I’d prefer to devote. But progress is elusive. I remind myself, as I kick off my shoes, they are different things, running and writing. Also, I’m trying to measure writing progress with publication success and those, too, are different things. Isn’t the progress in the consistency, effort, and perseverance? I remind myself of form, of focus, having learned over the years that being my own cheerleader – or practicing cognitive reconditioning, if you prefer – does pay off.

What we tell ourselves about ourselves matters.

I remind myself too, of those people in my life who love me, and even those who just like me a bit, who have encouraged me in my writing, or otherwise have demonstrated support or kindness when I’ve expressed a need for it, or even when I haven’t. It matters.

dirt road between trees
Photo by Lucas Pezeta on Pexels.com

Sometimes it seems we are running through the same fog we have found ourselves navigating over and over again, a haze comprised largely of absence, or need – for validation, respect, nurturing, who knows, it’s different for everyone – but likely, whatever it is, it’s a void that feels like a thing. It keeps us looking over shoulders, peeking around corners, it keeps us waiting, keeps us up at night, keeps us guarded and uncertain, but in truth, this thing is not a thing at all. If it is a void, it is an empty place, it is no thing at all, and so, let’s call it what is. It’s nothing, which means it doesn’t really have any power. I mean, it could. But we don’t have to let it. We don’t have to give it thing-ness, body, form, shape, substance. We can let it dissolve into nothingness. We can remind ourselves of the solid things that do exist, of what others offer us, of what we offer ourselves.

So maybe let’s be on the journey with open eyes, and run as slowly as we need to, and as far as we want to, and take it all in, the neighbor, the dog, the street, the zinnia and mum and dahlia.

Let’s give ourselves five more minutes.

Let’s enjoy the rituals of coffee-making and running and writing and kissing, and holding hands, and quiet moments next to each other, and creating beautiful things and useful things, and doing the work that gives us joy and tasting toast with homemade jam. Let a void be a void. Let the things we give substance and shape to only be the things we want to hold on to.

Love, Cath