Fragments of Cassandra

Daily writing prompt

How do you deal with uncertainty?

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Uncertainty and I know each other very well.

The way blades of grass know the warmth of the sun-  
by the way it finds them no matter where they grow.

It has found me in every season of my life.

And for most of it, I have been terrible at not knowing.

Uncertainty makes something frantic out of me. It makes me anxious, confused, depressed. My mind begins searching for anything it can hold onto; some small sliver of hope that I can keep alive long enough to soften the possibility that things may not turn out the way I want them to.

I have always needed answers to feel safe.
And when answers aren't available, I search.

I search until my eyes can no longer stay open. Then I wake up and search again. And again. I turn over every word, every possibility, every memory. I interrogate the past for evidence and the future for promises until eventually, I am no longer looking for an answer.

I am looking for myself.
Because somewhere in all that searching, I lost her.

It took me a long time to understand that my intolerance for uncertainty was never really about patience.

It was about control.

So much of my life happened  to  me.

Pain arrived loudly. Things were taken from me before I knew I needed to protect them. I learned what it felt like to be hurt by circumstances I could neither stop; nor change.

So when something had the potential to hurt me again, and uncertainty took away my ability to prepare for the blow, every part of me panicked.

I didn't need to control the outcome.
I needed to know the outcome, so I could control what happened inside of me.

If I knew the ending, perhaps I could rehearse the grief.

Perhaps I could ration the pain.
Perhaps nothing could ever catch me defenseless again.

But uncertainty doesn't negotiate.
And this past month, it taught me that brutally.

I think uncertainty has its own kind of grief.

First, it tears you apart. You don't know what to do with yourself. You become consumed by sadness, questions, possibilities.

Then comes anger.

Why is this happening to me?  
What did I do wrong?  
Why did I let myself get here?  
Why can't I fix this?

Strangely, anger was always easier.
There is somewhere for anger to go.

Then comes numbness.

After carrying too much for too long, the mind pulls the emergency brake. Everything becomes quiet, not peaceful, necessarily, just quiet. Your body has exhausted every alarm it knows how to sound, so eventually, it stops sounding them.

Numbness feels like the final chapter.

It isn't.

It may last the longest. You may even circle backward a few times. 

I did. 

Sadness becomes anger, anger becomes numbness, numbness cracks open and suddenly you're grieving again.

But eventually, something else arrives.

Peace.

Not the triumphant kind.
Not the kind where everything makes sense and every unanswered question finally receives its explanation.

Just peace.

You wake up one day and realize you can breathe without needing to know.
You may be an entirely different person by then.

But you made it.

You can smile again.
You can take care of yourself again.
And perhaps most importantly, you realize that surviving uncertainty did not require finding the answer.

It required surviving long enough to discover that you could live without one.

There are still uncertainties in my life.
They are just quieter now.

I don't know what my future will look like. None of us do. Tomorrow has never signed a contract promising to arrive exactly as we imagined it.

But today, I can do something that brings me joy.

Today, I can choose myself.
Today, I can decide what kind of person I want to be and take another step toward the life I want.

I cannot control what comes toward me.
But I can control what I walk toward.

And that is the only certainty I need.

The hardest thing uncertainty ever taught me was how to relinquish control over the things that were never mine to control in the first place.

So no-

I don't need to know what happens next anymore.
And if uncertainty ever finds me again, I think I will recognize it.

I won't interrogate it.
I won't beg it for answers.
I won't stay awake until sunrise trying to force a confession from something that simply does not know.

I think I would sit beside it.
And after a while, I would ask,

Are you okay?
Do you want me to sit here with you for a while?

Because I know how loud the unknown can become when you're inside of it.
And I know how frightening it is to sit there alone.

So this time, I won't fight uncertainty.
I'll keep it company.


Be'ahava,
The Mourning Bird