No Clean Lines

I keep waiting for my emotions to organize themselves.

For grief to line up on one side of the room and gratitude to stand politely on the other. For fear to take a number and wait its turn. For joy to not feel so precarious.

But nothing is lining up.

Everything is overlapping. Everything is happening in the same breath.

I can be staring at something impossibly small and new and feel this rush of awe so intense it almost makes me dizzy. Like life is insisting. Like the universe just keeps pressing forward no matter what.

And then five minutes later I am in my own head too long. Thinking about the fragility of bodies. The randomness of timelines. The fact that none of this is guaranteed.

It is not dramatic. It is just true.

I feel hyperaware lately. Of tone. Of silence. Of the weight behind simple sentences. I feel like my nervous system is on low battery but refusing to power down. There is always something to hold. Something to watch. Something to anticipate.

And I want to do it well.

That is the part that makes me ache. I want to do this season well. I want to respond instead of react. I want to protect without suffocating. I want to celebrate without bracing for impact. I want to be steady.

But steady does not mean untouched.

I am touched by all of it.

By the softness of newness.

By the heaviness of uncertainty.

By the responsibility of being someone people lean on.

There is a particular kind of grief that comes not from losing something but from realizing how much you could lose. It is anticipatory and irrational and completely human. It sits in your chest and whispers what if. It does not scream. It just lingers.

And yet I am also deeply, almost painfully grateful.

Grateful to be here for it.

Grateful to feel it.

Grateful that my life is full enough to be complicated.

I think that is the tether. The complication is proof of love.

If I did not love this deeply none of it would feel this high stakes.

Sometimes I catch myself scanning the future like it is something I can outthink. If I prepare enough. If I plan enough. If I hold tight enough. But life keeps reminding me that control is mostly illusion. All I really have is presence.

Presence is exhausting.

Presence means I do not numb out. It means I let the joy be bright without immediately dimming it. It means I let the fear exist without letting it run the house. It means I let the sadness move through instead of pretending I am fine.

I am not fine in a simple way.

I am layered. I am stretched. I am trying.

There are moments lately where I feel older than I did a month ago. Not because of time but because of awareness. Like I crossed some invisible threshold where I understand in my bones that everything is fragile and sacred at once.

It changes the way you speak.

It changes the way you hold someone’s hand.

It changes the way you look at a room before you leave it.

I do not feel hopeless. That is important. I do not feel swallowed.

I feel aware.

Aware that beginnings and reckonings can coexist.

Aware that love is always risk.

Aware that joy is not less real just because it is temporary.

Everything keeps moving whether I am ready or not. So I am trying to move with it instead of against it.

Trying to let the softness be soft.

Trying to let the hard things be real without catastrophizing them.

Trying to stay in my body instead of sprinting ahead into imagined futures.

Some nights I lie awake and feel all of it pressing in. The responsibility. The tenderness. The uncertainty. And I remind myself that this is what it means to care. This is the cost of loving with your whole chest.

I would rather feel this than feel nothing.

Even when it scares me.

Even when it makes my eyes burn in the dark.

Grief and love are not opposites. They are neighbors. They share a wall. And right now I can hear both of them breathing.

I am learning to sit in the middle of that sound.