there is a ping.
it lives in my chest and it arrives without warning.
mid~task
mid~breath
mid~nothing. not triggered by anything you could point to. just a sudden drop, like a stone through still water, and then the question arrives with it:
are you living?
and for a moment it is OVERWHELMING. not the question itself but the weight of it. the way it lands like i’ve done something wrong. like i’ve disappointed someone. like the people i love most are somewhere just out of sight, furious with me for reasons i can’t name and don’t know how to fix.
then i breathe.
and the stone settles.
and i look around at my actual life and i think: oh. oh i am living. i am living so much that paris keeps appearing in my peripheral vision like a suggestion i didn’t ask for.…
here is what’s true at the same time:
everything is moving. the work, the seasons, the version of myself i was three months ago, all of it shifting and becoming and rearranging without asking permission.
and also: some things aren’t moving at all.
certain people. certain dynamics. certain rooms that feel exactly the same as they did four years ago, like time forgot to enter them. like growth has a door and some things simply never ansewred when it knocked.
both of these exist in the same life. sometimes in the same hour. and trying to hold both of them, the thing that’s flying and the thing that’s frozen, is its own kind of vertigo.
when i’m busy, i don’t feel this.
the outside world is very good at filling the space where the ping lives. noise, tasks, the performance of productivity, all of it works beautifully as insulation until suddenly you’re somewhere quiet and your body sends up a flare like:
hey. i’ve been waiting.
and the ping returns. and you have to answer it again with no audience, no distraction, just you and the uncomfortable intimacy of your own chest asking if you’re actually here.
i’m learning to sit with it instead of run from it.
not because it’s comfortable. because it’s MINE. because underneath the fear there is something that knows the answer is yes. you are living. more than living. you are building a cosmology in real time and some of it is gorgeous and some of it is bewildering and all of it is yours.
i say paris like a suggestion but i know better.
feelings follow you. they buy the same ticket, sit in the same seat, order the same coffee and stare at you across the table like nothing changed. paris doesn’t cure anything. paris just has better light to see yourself in.
but i keep dreaming anyway. not about paris specifically.
(you think i’d let you in on my actual dreams before they happen? nonsense.)
but about what it means to keep the door open. to stay curious about your own life. to not let the frozen things convince you that everything is frozen.
what is life if you stop dreaming? i don’t want to find out.
the ping is not a warning. it’s a compass.
to answer the question. are you actually living?
By my own standards, with the quiet, certain knowledge that yes. yes i am. i am living so hard and so fully and so honestly that some days the only logical conclusion is paris.
and honestly?
there are worse endings.
Love you,
AP