Maybe I was dreaming of a garden growing far below

During the day, around people, I feel complete and whole and certain. But in my quiet moments, or after the lights go out, my mind becomes like a crystal flute smashed on the floor, with shimmering pieces thrown everywhere. I try to pick them up, but every time I nearly have one it cuts me and I drop it again to try another piece. Each thought a shattered fragment, bits that I remember, shards that I worry about. Mostly, I wonder what to do next year, what options are open to me, what options will be open to me, and what I should choose. I don't even know my best case scenario-- I don't know what I want. There are so many internships and programs I want to apply to, but what if nothing pans out, where do I go? Do I stay? Is that what is best for me? What if by some miracle every place I thought I might want accepted me-- even then I don't know what I would do. No matter what happens, I must believe I'll end up where I'm meant to end up, and if I sort out my thoughts maybe I'll find that I know the answers, but after all I've never liked change. A friend wrote to me that change is only possible in the midst of true catastrophe, and that falling in love is the purest sort of catastrophe. How odd that it changes everything and then makes it difficult to change again. I finish my thesis and then... an ellipses.

Then I worry about my thesis, and finishing it. What I need to read, what I need to outline, what I need to edit. Where to insert this paragraph or that, what should I take out, what should I leave out. What turn of phrase best captures what I mean? Is this sentence too long or too concise? I think of these things even as I try to fall asleep, going over every page in my mind's eye. Then it becomes too much and I drift to the other pieces of my mind. To God, to fate, to choice. To forgiveness, to thankfulness. To falling on my knees weeping with joy and weeping with pain, and how glad I am we are all alive.

The past, the present. Then they entwine with the future. People I've loved, people I've lost, people I hope one day to see again with smiles on our faces, sincere warmth in our hearts and in our embrace. People so far away from me that the distance seems almost insurmountable, some quite literally, others only in my mind. How close we all are to losing each other, to becoming only wisps of air that brush each others cheeks when the wind feels warm and smells of rain or cologne. And we remember and remember, our heavy hearts. And our remembrance affects everything, every decision. So does our love. So does our fear. And does this, then, circle 'round to what will I do next year? Or the year after that? I don't want these pieces to fit together, because this whole seems uncertain, governed by fear as it is. And love. Do they go together? "There is no right decision." Those words comfort me. Right now, there is no decision. There is no choice and there is an abundance of choice. I choose and choose and it makes no difference and it makes all the difference. I type a word. I click a button. I decide.

And in the end there is only desire for everything intangible, which we all imagine must exist in some far away place.

(Photo from here)