* The Only Thing to do is Try

The first of Lois’ peices for Medium’s #WriteHere challenge.

This year I resolved to resolve nothing. Except to (Stay afloat. Get afloat. Feel like the captain of myself.) keep my goals pinned safely between my ears.

Sounds like cynicism, doesn’t it?

But you can’t separate the art from the idealist.

I’ve still worked towards my wishes. Driven or piecemeal or under the duvet. I am — that double sword — resilient.

I’ve made breadcrumbs out of admin out of worry. Comfort in procedure, links, addresses, referencing styles, application formats. The spreadsheets look like work in and of themselves.

And aren’t they? Isn’t it work, looking red font and strikethroughs, just to write your strengths you don’t believe in anymore?

“You’ve kept yourself busy, though. Don’t give up now.”

We regret to inform you, there’s nothing else to do. You are yourself, forever.

I know there’s marks of business on my CV. That I’ve heard an even split of murmurs from anxiety and admiration. But I see these slights of progress like they’ve stepped towards Charlie’s Chocolate Factory. forward, back, back. F r a c t u r e d. Projects that count under the right eyeglass, with the right dose of good will.

A kindness calls, whenever it can. Reminding me of greater worries.

“You’re doing fine. After all, aren’t you alive?”

Actually, I’m paying off a fine. Or so it feels. Shackled to a debt-in-waiting from the expense of neurochemicals that people on my county border just can’t get through the NHS, until (unless) the paper-trail towards their waiting list stops deleting and resetting itself — always steps behind your need.

My post-nominal letters (A, D, H, D) seem to precede me regardless of disclosure or suppression.

My whirligig experience of ‘almosts’, no-ones’ faults’, nevertheless not enoughs’ makes the belief of hope feel like a toothache.

I don’t have to believe to try. To track. Or even to trace the lines of what I love and indulge in birthday cake wishes for them.

All I’ll do is try. To prune my neurotype somewhere between the bounds of authenticity and pragmatism. Try to feel enough, when it is not enough, when the sky begins to fall and the floorboards disappear and some of the everything, even then, remains okay.

Try to forge the person who no longer needs to try.

(I’d like to tell Yoda, the little snot, that sometimes: *)