The Comfort of Something Familiar

Photo credit: Christian Lambert on unsplash.com

In time, like any good observer, you start to notice things around you. The chirping of birds. Particles of dust dancing in the rising sunlight. The ticking of a clock as you lie in your bed. You count the seconds until you lose track because 479 is too big of a number. You leave your bed, the scrambled sheets aching for you, but you know better than to fall in that trap. Or maybe you don’t. The comfort of something familiar has always been welcoming.

In your long-abandoned inbox, you see a name you haven’t been in touch with for a while. You tap the fingers like you would on a reception desk. ‘Oh, why did I stop talking to them?’ Maybe you didn’t. Maybe silence became the language for both of you. And maybe you accepted the sweet pain it brought you to revisit your old and treasured conversations which are no more than ancient history by now. Maybe they accepted it too. But when has anything been achieved without challenging what is accepted? So you set that message free.

Your desk calls to you. A few discarded pages peeking from under a textbook that you see every day but choose to ignore. Oh, how they flutter in the breeze. Maybe the ink hasn’t dried yet. Your brain hasn’t rusted and you can perhaps birth a few more paragraphs. Creation is in the domain of the gods. And wouldn’t you like to try?

Hours become days and days become weeks. The light doesn’t burn anymore. You begin to select what nourishes you from the pile of what life offers. The murmurs of a conversation from a nearby table - which once would have annoyed you - pique your interest. You’ve seen them in class, across the hall at the office or in a group chat. You might have even shared a few words in passing. Why not try that again?

A 'hi’ becomes a conversation, a coffee order becomes a date, and friendship becomes love. And you notice the signs again. How you almost know their reaction before they say anything. How you flock to them even at the slightest of inconveniences. How you find yourself almost saying the things you promised yourself you would never say. Admitting you need them in a capacity anyone would be privileged to be in. But look how they make you feel.

Soon you realize that all is not roses. With time come disagreements, and eventually, fights. Over small insignificant issues like why you never put the fork in a particular drawer. And ugly ones fueled by jealousy and a lingering feeling of self- incompetence that has plagued you throughout your life. You fear it’s the end. It’s happened before. What’s to say it won’t happen again? Everything will crash and burn, like the countless times before, and it’s all your fault like it’s always been your fault. Maybe you deserve it.

Maybe you don’t.

Before the moon can set and the sun comes riding in his chariot, you find yourself staring at each other in the living room. There is guilt in your - in everyone’s - eyes. There is shame and there is hurt. The fear you have is not contained, not limited inside you. It’s in the air, carried from breath to breath. Your hands shake and you burst into tears, apologies flowing out like a river that has been kept from its course. Under the weight of the water, you crumble and you fall.

But your pieces won’t fall into oblivion.

Gentle hands guide you into their embrace. Their voices cut through the darkness and their words mend the bridges that were burned the day before. They do what no one did before: show you that you’re not to blame. In that comfort, you let go. You know there is fear - of everything falling apart - but there is also a promise. A promise of love and warmth, laughter and medicine, a promise of unwavering trust and desire.

Then one day you wake up to the chirping of birds. The particles of dust dancing in the rising sunlight. To the ticking of a clock as you lie in your bed. You count the seconds until you lose track because the sheets rustle beside you. Where once you would have simply touched the floor, you now nestle in the cocoon of cotton and skin. Your head is full of words any stroke of the pen would be grateful to bleed. But the pages can wait. For the comfort of something familiar has always been welcoming.