Fragments of Cassandra

Nothing happened today.

It felt like sitting in a coffee shop  
somewhere in the middle of the afternoon,  
watching sunlight pour through the windows  
and settling quietly across the tables.

A few people sitting scattered around the room,  
occupied by books, laptops, conversations spoken just above a whisper.  
Behind the counter, a barista wiping down a surface  
that was already clean.

Nothing more.

Which, lately,  
feels remarkable.

The past month has been loud.

Grief has occupied nearly every room in me.  
Uncertainty rearranged the furniture.  
Sadness left its belongings everywhere,  
and anxiety paced the halls at night  
asking questions no one could answer.

What happens now?
Where does this go?
What if it doesn't work out? 
What if I choose wrong?

I spent so much time trying to predict the ending  
that I forgot I was still somewhere in the middle.

But today,  
my mind is quiet.

And I don't entirely trust it.
I keep searching myself for something-

a buried sadness,  
an approaching breakdown,  
some emotion waiting behind a door  
that I haven't opened yet.

There has to be something wrong.

I have spent my entire life with a mind  
that could build a thousand futures before breakfast,  
dissect a feeling until there was nothing left but bone,  
turn every silence into a question  
and every question into a catastrophe.

So what am I supposed to do  
with all of this quiet?

Part of me mourns the woman I was.

She felt everything.

Deeply.  
Violently.  
Beautifully.
And even innocently. 

She could make a universe out of a feeling.  
She could find meaning inside pain  
because pain gave her so much material to search through.

Sometimes I reach for her  
and wonder where she went.

I wonder if losing some of her  
means I have lost some of myself.

Is this healing?
Is this numbness?
Am I even going in the right direction?

The strange thing is,  
my life isn't suddenly certain.

I still don't know exactly where everything leads.  
There are chapters ahead of me I cannot read yet,  
roads I haven't walked,  
versions of myself I haven't met.

But I have something I didn't have before.

A blueprint.

Not for how everything will end,  
but for where I want to go next.

And perhaps that is enough.

I know what I want to build now.  
I know which direction feels like mine.

For the first time in a long time,  
I don't feel compelled to chase an outcome  
and wrestle it into a conclusion.

Whatever happens, happens.

I will meet it when it arrives.

There is something almost frightening about that sentence.
There was a time I would have needed guarantees.

Today,  
I only need the next step.

Maybe healing was never supposed to feel euphoric.
Maybe I misunderstood it.

Maybe I thought one day I would wake up  
overflowing with happiness,  
finally transformed into someone  
who never grieved,  
never doubted,  
never looked backward.

But perhaps healing sometimes looks painfully ordinary.

A coffee shop.
A quiet afternoon.
A mind with nothing urgent to say.

Maybe peace does not always announce itself.

Maybe sometimes it sits quietly across from you  
until you finally stop asking it  
what it is doing there.

So I am trying not to interrogate this feeling.

I am trying not to ruin okay 
by demanding that it become something more.

I am trying not to mistake the absence of suffering  
for the absence of myself.

Tomorrow, I may feel everything again.

But today,

I am not devastated.
I am not euphoric.
I am not waiting for an answer.
I am not trying to predict the ending.

I am sitting in the middle of an ordinary afternoon,  
drinking coffee while the world continues quietly around me.

And nothing happened today.

Thank God,
nothing happened today.


Be'ahava,
The Mourning Bird