What Was I Made For?

'...you’d rather stay in a space where it’s cold and dark than in no space at all.'

I am in my mid-twenties, and sometimes I still don’t know who I want to be or what was I made for (shout out to Billie Eilish).

We know very well who we are. We work through it every day. We wake up every morning, brush our teeth, pick up a suitable outfit (or maybe just your usual uniform), put on our hats, and head off.

Before you arrived, you were just a somebody with no name written on anybody’s wall. But your first step inside the building, you are a student, a banker, a professor, an office clerk, a waitress, an administrator—you name them all.

The hats that we wear are useful in some ways—for the company, for the family and friends, for yourself, and for the house you sustain back on 7th Street. But the time we spent for hours has passed, and you want to take your hats off for a bit. You’re scared you might get a headache.

Now you inhale a long, deep breath, and you throw your head off the back of the chair; you are sinking down the chair. You are tired of this life. ‘Life should be more than just this.’ But you can’t tell no one about this because you’re afraid of being judged. You’re afraid that they’d tell you to stay instead. You’re afraid that there’s no other place that would welcome you—

because you’d rather stay in a space where it’s cold and dark than in no space at all. This world is a scary place to be, and no one ever told you that because maybe they’re scared, too. And no one ever told you or reminded you of this, but you’re free enough to change your dreams, to tilt them a little, or to erase them completely; this doesn’t mean you failed at all. It might be a hole where you stumbled. It might be rain and hell. You might not get to a place where you can close your eyes without your heart beating the skin out of you. It will be chaos over train rides, expenses, and new friends that can’t seem to be friends.

There’s a reason why happiness and joy have different names. There’s a reason why you’re put this way, and others seem to be higher up than you or a little lower than where you are now. You just can’t seem to fit anywhere near the line. You realised it’s been quite a while since you thought of these through, and you’re not sorry for the loss of time you just wasted, maybe because you need it after all. There’s no reason for skipping lunch other than to be kinder to yourself.

You started to hear the people’s chatter back into the room, so you took your very last deep inhale and let it out with a stretch and a big sigh, so no one seemed to realise you were letting out a complaint rather than a stiff in the back of your neck. You made it again.

You put on your hat. You feel lighter since, and you’ll keep doing this until things work out.

Warmth,

Val | @PoetryOfHvaw