I cannot tell you the relief I feel to watch this thick layer of frost begin to thaw and trickle over each and every inch of my warming skin.
I've been in hibernation for months now, numb, subdued, and trying to work out where to go from here when the future is an enigma, the present a frustration, and the only thing that ever seemed to be remarkable, my past.
How are you ever meant to follow the most incredible thing you've ever done?
Since the start of this year the word 'failure' has swarmed around me, buzzing incessantly and inescapably in my ear, because what I followed it with was... nothing. I slipped into a monotonous routine so far removed from the wild adventure I made of my life, whilst criminalising myself for becoming the person I spent my whole life campaigning against being.
I let myself be tamed in the name of practicality. Employability. Reason.
But as the sun seeks the gaps in these choking clouds, the light chases at the feet of my dogged apathy and tugs at the shoulder of my long-turned back with the unmistakeable scent of hope. And as I glance at my hands, streams of water begin to pour through my fingers like the final frantic sands of an upturned hourglass, and I slowly come to see that, in fact, there wasn't any other way.
How are you ever meant to follow the most incredible thing you've ever done? You're not.
Like those mid-season filler episodes or a mid-album filler track, a work of art cannot be built on just peaks alone. It requires a varied structure for strength, a dip for every peak, a plateau for every sheer drop or climb.
And as I squint through this new sunlight back to the chronicle which creeps toward completion with every step forward that I take, only now can I understand the purpose of that lost chapter so marred by my apparent lack of purpose.
There will always be filler episodes in life. They may last days, weeks, months or even years. And while it may seem you are devoid of passion and dry of ambition in a never-ending drought which seems like your great downfall, perhaps the universe is just gathering energy and harvesting resources, in preparation for you to experience the Next Big Thing that's going to blow your goddamn mind.
