here’s the thing, you know, there is no answer. there is no magic.

every day there is an infinite series of moments. i say, and i maintain, that you don’t choose happiness because it’s not that simple, but you do fight, when the sadness comes, and it does. it does all the time, with the smallest things. a palm tree. a mention of a casino. a thought of another state, far away from here, where it is cold so much. where you saw ice fishing. a park, a place you were convinced was heaven, or the closest approximation you’d find here, that you never found again. and now, any of the people that would know it besides you, they are gone. they are gone because souls leave. these are the points, the tiny bullets of the day that we ward off.

you are pulled by the tide in every moment but this doesn’t mean that you are a slave to it. there is no fairy dust for a good life. there isn’t even one definition for a good life. there is work, there is effort, there are plans, there is communication, there is love and connection. there are all of these things and you choose, always, what matters to you. you choose where to focus your attention, where to focus the energy we are given to expend, to try to make it better.

everything, i’ve come to think, is about how hard you try.

but there is no answer. if you’re like me and you’re waiting for the moment, the precise, exact nanosecond when it will all just click, stop. stop because this isn’t how it comes together and it’s not going to happen. instead you choose, every morning, every day, every hour, and sometimes even every second where you’re going.

i had a vision of myself in a small room in brooklyn, park slope, cobble hill, fort greene, one of the nice yuppie neighborhoods with lots of cute shops and restaurants. i had a vision of myself alone, on a bed rumpled with a plain white down comforter, and the walls are lit by a lamp covered in a red scarf. and this isn’t my life – i’m sitting in brooklyn, not at all in one of the nice yuppie neighborhoods, in an incredibly large bedroom on a rumpled down comforter with a duvet cover on it, and the man i love is in the other room, and i am writing. we veer, we travel, we will deviate and it is fine.

i never forgot when i visited her at bryn mawr and her room was the last thing from neat and we sat on a rumpled bed and spread tarot cards. she told me something about my life and i realized right then that i was either going to get over it or not and those were my only two choices. it was freeing, and i sobbed. there are only ever two options – it will happen, or it won’t, and what’s really amazing about it is that it’s in your hands. it always is.