5th

EPIPHANY

Do you remember the last time you felt like you finally did it? Like you finally achieved the one thing you wanted, and this is it.

If you did, how long did the feeling last for? How long did it take for the rush of achieving the next big thing came trickling down? How long till your shoulders slumped back with the burden of your dreams? Do you even remember being at peace the last time you went to sleep.

A lady in her thirties had also gone adrift in this race of life. She never felt she was enough, there was always someone who looked better or had a better paying job, some had a family already, some had their empires, and many had much more confidence than she did, or so her anxiety made her believe.

She remembers when she was a little girl like it was yesterday and how she never stopped on her journey to reach her goals. She went fast, almost…. too fast. To the point where she could never live in her present, it was as if the present was not good enough and she needed an escape. The escape being the future. Years had just phased by in the rush to achieve the next high, in the rush to make everything perfect where she did not even realize she developed obsessive compulsive disorders, the disorders of a perfectionist.

Eventually, it did end up the way she wanted, her shoes all color coordinated, her desk perfectly arranged and her furniture aesthetically vintage. But, at what cost? She now sits here in her skyline view clad bachelor pad in one of the costliest city in the world … alone.

She would have not thought of it if it wasn’t for the world to stand still because of a global pandemic. For the streets to be as empty as her soul. For everyone to finally sit back home with their family with nothing but to finally talk to each other to escape time. The other day she called her siblings and realized they have little wrinkles appear when they smile too wide, their hair showcasing a bit of white, or how the most rebellious of them all has been in a steady relationship for a while now. She realized the flowers in her mother’s garden had stopped blooming since a couple of years. How the guy she had a crush on was happily married with two kids now.

It was as if time had a different take on others than it had on her. She focused too much on herself and her goals that she forgot about the other aspects of life or other emotions she didn’t let herself feel. She noticed how she had everything she always wanted but had forgotten to appreciate it along the way.

That’s when she started thinking. Thinking about what she is really doing in life. Where does she stand now after achieving all those materialistic things she logged to achieve for a decade! Was it true that the things she achieved came with the disorders and anxiety, came with the lows of depression or a routine of taking pills to go to sleep. What she had achieved was a big deal but the way she let herself go, was her own fault. It was her own denial that what she has, isn’t enough.

It made her truly look at herself in the mirror and remark at how much she had changed to the point she couldn’t recognize who she was looking at. Except what looked back at her were those same tired, unsatisfied sad eyes. She noticed how she now had slightly hunched shoulders and how her eyes have gone a shade lighter. The lady in the mirror had become a slave to the lifestyle she thought was made for her, what she thought she had wanted. A walking living machine is what was left of her. She sat there near her ceiling to floor windows and looked at the million tiny windows in her skyscraper filled neighborhood. She thought about all the times she could have stopped and ask for help.

So, she decided to end it all, the self-isolation came as a moment of epiphany, the fact that she had ended up never giving her true self a choice. She removed all those designer outfits from her closet, wore them with matching accessories. She cooked dressed like that listening to the tunes that her young self once danced on. She hummed those tunes and glided through her kitchen making all the dishes she thought she could never cook. She realized she doesn’t actually like drinking coffee, it was more of a fad she followed at some point.  She called all her friends throughout her life and caught up on the youth she missed out on. She binged on all the shows the young ones were talking about. She even unblocked all her exes just to realize how good of friends they all could have been.

 That’s when it hit her, that spending time alone with herself and her people and being grateful for what she had achieved already was all she needed to finally dump the pills in trash and live life the way it is meant to be.

Slowly, lovingly, purely and without any rush.

-Penned by DesiG

-Header Photo by Dương Trần Quốc on Unsplash