A Shift I Often Must Make

I found it this morning when looking for my morning pills. There it was, in the same place it’s been since January, taking up much of the space in this drawer, calling my attention with its gorgeous, glimmery design. My notebook.

Being only 6:05 in the morning, I thought I’d pause and check out the sentences I collected in January as part of my “slicing preparation.” When I collected those sentences, the only goal was to get them down and mark that day as done. There wasn’t much intention in what I chose to write or how I wrote it. It was freestyling, no thinking, work it.

I brought the notebook to the kitchen, placed it on the kitchen counter, and opened it to a random section. First, I was delighted to find more sheets of orange stickers (they are now as common to me as Post-its). I put those aside and flipped a few pages back to find where January began. 

The sentences found me just as I found the notebook, unexpectedly. They seemed to believe their fate was to stand on their own, without being shaped into anything else. But one of them made eye contact with me, it read itself inside my head, suggesting I do something with it.

“You like how I sound,” it said. “I’m proof that sometimes cool stuff comes out when you’re freestyling.”

I took the hint and went to get my laptop. There’s a lot that can be said with that sentence, I thought. I wear that sentence most of my days, whenever I think of Elena, and on special days. I also fight with it. That sentence doesn’t argue; it just stands. But I think of it, and become defensive.

I fall into a “I’m right, you aren’t” sort of debate. That sentence, tucked in a notebook, left inside a drawer—without a worry in the world. Because the sentence, as much as it does nothing to provoke me, holds a way of being I have tried to get rid of, like a snake peels its skin. Slowly, but surely.

The other day, I wrote about seeing my life in the opposite way of what that sentence represents. Since this challenge started, and even before that, I’ve caught myself toying with that sentence, but fighting the mindset. There’s only truth to it if I allow there to be. It’s a shift I often must make.

So this morning, as I finish typing these words with a commitment to let it be and just go back to my happier way of seeing life, I decide I’ll write a new sentence to be my standing soldier whenever I need it.