August and the Agony of Waiting

On living in the unknown, the flat circle of time, and Vanessa Angélica Villarreal

I find it ridiculous that August is always the month in which my life decides to take a dramatic turn. It’s too on the nose. Last August as I noticed the first whiffs of wet oak leaf threading themselves into the breeze I was ready to plunge fearlessly into a full-bellied human experience, unflinching at the premise of the carnal rot of heartbreak—I was ready to change, and I believed for the better. Now, at the cusp of another autumn, I can sense everything is changing again, and I don’t know if it’s for the better, but I do know that I feel a lot worse.

That’s life. Hope and optimism are eventually replaced by devastation and what I can only describe as some sort of spiritual decay, and then again by hope and optimism, and the cycle continues.

By all accounts, I’m in the spiritual decay part of this cycle right now. It’s fine—I’ve been here before, like all of us have. I can recognize that it has less to do with outcomes and everything to do with the idea of having been hurled into the unknown suddenly, without a lifejacket or even a snack to accompany me on the ride. And as much as I’ve tried to keep my composure and approach this period of time with my usual remedies (exercise, writing, therapy, etc.), I’ve resorted mainly to not eating, not sleeping, and doomscrolling my days away while waiting for answers that I’m unsure will ever come.

How do people build the tolerance for situations like these? I don’t think I’m there yet, but I have been thinking about Nietzsche (of course), whose concept of eternal recurrence led to the idea that time is a flat circle. In other words, everything we have ever done we will continue to do throughout our lifetimes forever.

It sounds bleak, but I don’t think it means we’re stuck in an eternal doom loop. It means that all beginnings are endings, and all endings are beginnings; it means that while you may find yourself in familiar places again and again throughout your life, you’re never the same person each time you cross the threshold.

The unknown in which I currently reside is not a static place; I will move on from here, and the next time I arrive at this part of the circle, I will be a little stronger, a little wiser. Everyone I’ve ever met on that circle I will meet again—even those I thought I’d lost forever. And so on.

I’m currently writing from Germany, in the town that I was born. Here I am, where it all began (for me), and it feels like everything is ending. Somehow this feels, despite the cruelty and randomness of the universe, like I am tending to myself in the right way: by honoring the cyclic ritual of leaving and returning again, just like the sigh of accordion bellows as they reach for each other before pulling away, over and over and over again, a dance that creates its music itself.

I’ll leave you with this beautifully gut-wrenching poem by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal. It found me at the right time and place, and I’m grateful for that.

To the Friend Who Is Crying on the Phone

For Muriel

Once, a man I thought I
loved assumed love was a thing bound
to the future, an obligation that lay
ahead rather than the rarest swelling now

& he said when I think of the future
I have to admit there is not future
& while I’m sure he meant to say “no
future” the not made his statement Boolean,

the future as true or false rather than less possible
& more possible, & that is also the difference
between time & space, god & the devil, matter
& antimatter, heaven & the counterpart

to heaven, all of them theories
of love. In pitch dark it comes: faith
is a feeling rooted in hopelessness. & so I refuse
a world cut into brutal black

& white halves when all god
has ever been is a field imagining
itself, an infinite grey coast forming
morning color; how a woman left

for dead will fist a root from the bank
& pull herself out of the river;
like the baby born in a bomb
shelter between nations; or the elder

remembering the original names of time;
like a scorpion overcoming his
nature to cross the water on faith alone—
this too is love:

The crane that surrenders to winter’s last
light. To accept the not future
as another kind of now, and hold in
the tide that tosses & swells & swells

& swells yearning to reach the edge
of a cliffside that was once a low coast
at the beginning of the world; the letting go
is easier when even the sea must dream its mirror;

& when time starts over, the future will be behind us but
love, like god, will still be here

Here I am, doing my best to accept the not future and whatever else may be or not be, knowing that at the ending (or beginning) of it all, love, like god, will still be here.

Thanks for reading, I’ll be back soon.