the shoes

Let me tell you something; rock-bottom is a black, nine-dollar loafer. 

I can explain. 

When you think you know your lowest point, you don't. Because finding that place is something you will never recognize until you are right down in the midst of the lowness, of the ground that surrounds you, of realizing just how far you've fallen from your last bottom line to get where you are now.

Perhaps this seems a bit extreme. Which is understandable coming from an outsider's perspective, if you yourself are not the one feeling tripped up or let down or facing defeat, feeling no fight left, for only today. If it's not you for this moment, it has been, or it (tragically) will be for the next. It's safe to say that we will all, at some point, reach a new sense of feeling failed, or failing, and cannot seem to come to terms with what our next step ought to be. This haziness has such potential for destruction, all while still harnessing a chance to win out, to come through it better, inspired, or changed.

But how many times, though?

How often? 

How much? 

How much can we really take before we give in?

Noted, giving in is not the same as giving up. It feels similar, in many senses, and it brings us to corresponding conclusions at times. But giving up, despite the ease it implies, though it promotes a sense of shrugging off the world without a care, requires a lot more of us, a stronger lean toward the inability to go on at all. Giving in, however, means we merely can't go on with the way things are. So we admit that, take an honest look at what surrounds us, we find what we don't like about it (or the way we see ourselves in it), maybe we take a day or two to suppress it, analyze it, rethink it, review it, and believe it or not, despite the difficulty this decision brings, you come through it with a plan, usually just a small one, or some sort of reassurance, a next step in mind, the slightest or the grandest, and you move on. 

Giving in leaves you somewhere to turn. Giving in means we can confess we're not okay with the way things are going, that we can still picture the way things ought to be, the things we wish for, faintly. With that vision in mind, however far from us it feels, we can work towards something, whatever that amendment is, with a new sense of purpose and resolve.

It won't necessarily make us stronger people all at once. But it's laying out a challenge, a written and formed journey, it's realizing that despite the step-by-step plan we have envisioned all along, we are going to have to at some points a. go with the flow, b. bend with the curves or c. (my favorite) wait and wait and wait. 

I don't know what it takes for most people to stand up with a proverbial light bulb over their tired heads, gleaming with new thoughts and intervention. For me, times turn when you're standing in a Walmart shoe department, analyzing your life with your meanest microscope, while a woman next to you in a floor-length fur coat talks to herself.

I'm pretty sure that would make anyone publicly cry. If not, then I admit that it was me, and if Colin wasn't there to remind me, in sincere kindness, that I'm doing my best, that we can only persevere, then I might still be there today, trying to find a goddamn pair of shoes for a job I was born to hate. 

Still, just like that, the world has changed. While everything remains the same, we can remaster the way we face the challenge. It's almost like the universe is daring us all to go on, is throwing boulders in our paths, shorting our brakes, sticking it's clunky, ubiquitous foot in our way, watching us trip down the hall, laughing at our clumsiness. 

But here's the thing. The confrontation of it all is what keeps me going. For all the ways that life seems monumentally unfair, I am given the constant opportunity to love what's before me, or to let the difficult parts drown out the ways I'm blessed. Do I want to spend my afternoons off going to 10+ stores, all to seek an ugly pair of black sneakers so that I can cling to a position I never wanted?

No.

But, the fact is that I got to spend those afternoons with a person I love, and who undeniably loves me as he was patient with my impatience, caring with my complaining, and comforting when I reached the end of it all. What I think I mean to say is, whatever you're going through, you've been equipped, more or less, or paired with the things you need to make it through. Whether it's your strong sense of self, the mornings off you can spend outside, the art you create when you're alone, the places you've seen, or the people who have made your life worth it, who have made your days more than bearable but full of real and true happiness. 

While we will always retain the right to hope for certain things and aim for change where we can manage it, our hardest days come and go, and we will be reminded of where our support comes from, by who cares for us, by who knows our hearts and believes in what we can do. 

And really, how lucky we are to have just that.