the sigh & the torment

A squiggle of a finger and a press of a button, that’s all it took to sign my ownership of my airstream over. My home, my refuge, my safety. It was both deceitfully devastating and breathtakingly relieving. I think a lot of hard things in life are both. And I think a lot of times humans have a hard time with holding the pair equal in their chest.

I used to believe these feelings were conflicting of one another. That the decision, or the event, or what have you, was somehow “incorrect” because my heart couldn’t pick whether to be relieved or devastated. The first time I felt this to a capacity that left me completely indecisive—which I am not known for— was when I returned from Ghana and was suffering both emotionally and physically. I had to make the decision to return to university that semester or take it off and remain in Minnesota. Neither choice seemed like the right one at the time, and both options left me feeling relieved and devastated. I truly begged for someone to just make the decision for me, and when that didn’t happen and I finally decided to not return back to Michigan and take the semester to do online classwork and heal my body, I felt powerless yet comforted. And in the grand scheme of things, it made no difference to my “plans”. I still graduated on time, I still was confirmed a medical mystery. I still was able to see my friends, yet didn’t have to go through the torture of living in a dorm and eating dining hall food everyday. I was also lonely and anxious, but would I have felt the same way if I had decided to return to school for a few months—who knows? It obviously doesn’t torment me like it did years ago.

And I know that in weeks and months to come, signing my airstream over is going to shrink smaller and smaller as I grow and create and open doors for newness to take root. Perhaps I’m relieved because it’s over. Perhaps I’m devastated for the same reason. That’s not a bad thing. I learned years ago that rationalizing and “fixing” feelings is in and of itself irrational, and furthermore completely unhelpful and entirely disappointing. So maybe I’ll ski down a mountain today and let the wind whip my thoughts away. Perhaps I’ll snuggle up by the fire and finish the book I’ve been working on. Or maybe I will do absolutely nothing. And all of that is perfectly okay.