(day 2): 2 a.m. musings on holes in hearts

I've barely slept for 3 hours.

Lying here with this big drama-shaped hole in my heart, I try to breathe into it, to soften it somehow. Make it malleable. Like playdough. Press it and shape it into something beautiful.

But it wants to remain solid and hard for now. It won't be thawed with tears. It won't be crushed with determination. It won't be sublimated by fiery responsibility.

It resists alchemy. It just wants to be.

I tell it that I accept it.

But I have a hidden agenda. I know that if I accept it, it will dissolve and disappear of its own accord.

And now that it knows my intentions towards it are less than pure, that by accepting it I'm in fact wishing for it to go away, it clings on tighter. As if it has nowhere else to go.

I wrote a short story, title The Alchemist a few years ago. The premise was what if alchemy has remained an impossible science for the simple reason that none of the other metals want to be transformed into gold? What if they wish to remain themselves? What if they are happy being who they are?

I wonder if that state of mind – remaining who we are, being happy with who we are – is even achievable.

Because aren't we changing all the time in response to whatever's going on around us and inside us?

Responding to kindness or to indifference? Recipients of understanding or false accusations? Each interaction with the world outside changes us a wee bit; put together millions of interactions in the course of a day, and we are a different person by the end of it.

There is an inevitable groundlessness in the very fact of our existence. Nothing to hold on to.

Instead of telling myself that I need something to lean on, something like a promise, something I can trust or look forward to, what if I stopped seeking that elusive something?

What if I were to accept that no matter what I have, or don't have, nothing can eradicate this groundlessness?

It is a scary thought.

But not accepting it and wishing things were otherwise is also the reason I feel so stuck and miserable, so powerless in this material world.

And I wonder if I've gotten it all wrong – all my ideas of right and wrong, of what works and what doesn't, even of what I want from life?

What if we could live our lives without wanting anything from it? Why does life have to become something big and news-worthy or Instagram-worthy?

What if my life today could simply involve sitting down and breathing for the day, just today, without thinking of running away or of the past and the future?