#82 roll the dice

reinvention hurts at first, but it's the only way

Caroline Ellis

Two weeks of straight downpour and barely any sun means my runs have reluctantly been resigned to the home gym treadmill. This makes me feel claustrophobic somehow, so one evening I decide the consequent bad hair day will be worth the aliveness that may come from just saying, fuck it, and going outside to clock some miles despite the downpour. The street is empty, the trees are a lush green, and my white New Balances are muddy within the first lap, but it’s okay. The playlist is good, my legs are carrying me through from months of consistency and warm ups, and there’s a strange main character-esque feeling to this whole thing.

Girls born with a monstrous overspill of emotion will understand when I say that every minute of the day can be laced with unpacking your brutal self awareness to the point of exhaustion, but lately, most of my cynicism has gone mute. In its place, there is excited anticipation and a quiet celebration at the end of the night when I go to bed, an eagerness to wake up and go hard at my goals again. The 4 year burnout I came home to recover from is leaving my body.

Maybe it’s the daily exercise endorphins, or self-enforced gritted teeth optimism I’m practicing, or new love, or going completely sober from alcohol 40+ days ago. Maybe it’s that I’ve started to take magnesium again, which has improved my insomnia and fried nervous system’s ability to thaw itself. Maybe it’s that in a fortnight from now, I’m getting on a flight to go see a city that’s been on my bucket list for a long time. Maybe it’s that the purging period for my tretinoin prescription is finally over and my skin’s cleared up and radiant, even without the shield of concealer. Or maybe it’s just that one good week of the month women get when their period finally ends and life feels fruitful again?

Either way, it’s a feeling to capitalize on. At 29, I have a razor sharp idea of who I am, and who I will never be. I can hold logic vs emotion like yin and yang in two palms at the same time. I’m glad so much hasn’t worked out, giddy about the mistakes I made, grateful to the people who left. I know where I’ll live in 3 months from now, I know I’ll learn a fourth language, and I know my next apartment will have a nice view, because my manifestation powers are otherworldly, if previous chapters are any proof. Whether it’s shopping or life choices, I’m a surprisingly decisive woman, rarely ever backtracking despite the familiar pull of nostalgia. There is a life lesson in standing at length from the painting of your life and admiring its colors from a distance.

As a Capricorn and an eldest daughter, I was used to making a rigid five year plan since I was eighteen years old. The thing about five year plans is that the Universe comes at them with a wrecking ball and you stand next to the rubble of the demolition site, chewing on the end of your pencil, wondering what you’ll do now. Making another five year plan is proving useless, so instead, you get good at finding newer land, building better homes from scratch with sturdier bones. You learn to love, but not to attach. You learn to work secretly towards something big, but only publicize the result when it’s accomplished. You learn to choose yourself over and over, especially when circumstances and people are doing the opposite.

It’s simple - Life is a mystery box subscription, so you can either flail around in denial of change and make it uncomfortable to adapt later, or you can welcome the discomfort and say, Okay, cool. What’s the lesson I’m learning here? How fast can I turn this into a favorable outcome?

The past is a photo album to flip through with regret in the bookmarks, and the future is a blank roll of film loaded into a fully charged camera. You get to decide which is more fun - doing novel things that are worth capturing, or sitting on the floor bleeding out in memory that never changes its already-happened outcomes.

In the middle of my run, the rain stops as suddenly as it had started. The sun makes a celebrity appearance through gloomy sky, shedding gold light on freshly settled raindrops. The neighborhood’s stray cats sneak out from their hiding places and begin to prowl the pavements again. My sneakers are still muddy, and the playlist is still going, but I’m glad I chose to come out when it was still pouring and grey, so I could witness this shift to pecan orange. If I’d never tied my shoelaces and faced the gloom, I wouldn’t have seen the glorious sunset I’m seeing now. Everyone knows a poet like me loves the metaphor in that. Everyone knows a sunset is even more spectacular after it’s just rained, its colors more potent and satisfying.

I guess the beauty of new beginnings combined with adulthood is that you have full autonomy over when and how to start fresh. It could be right now, after you finish reading this essay, or it could be tomorrow morning. A new beginning is at your disposal at any time. It could be commemorated with an experimental haircut (big and scary) or rearranging the furniture in your bedroom (safe and temporary).

I love that Ellen Langer quote where she says, “Rather than waste your time being stressed over making the right decision, make the decision right.” It’s what you do after a decision - any decision - is made that determines how things will play out. So the only thing standing between you and a new beginning is a resolute choice to roll the dice, to play for the experience and the story. In my humble opinion, the wins will find you shortly after you find the courage to step into the game with some amount of optimism, no matter how much delusion you have to muster to get yourself there.