Frankly Put: Reflecting on Endings
Endings. It’s difficult to begin this. Ha! Yeah, I’m definitely a poet. Anyway…
I used to think that change is what the struggle was for me but only just recently I came to the realization that it is not the change itself that is the hurdle. It is endings. I’m looking at it through this lens of everytime something has caused me great strife from the large to the seemingly inconsequential. Whilst change is the constant, it works with it’s lover endings and I have beef with the lover.
I think I pick a bone with it holistically. It isn’t not the fact that sometimes it comes abruptly. Nor is it the times that it comes slow. Nor it is when it is only a mirage far into the future. I have looked forward to endings. I have hated and tried to run away from endings and I have tried to wade through them but it’s a problem like an itch so deep in the palm of one’s hand. I’m sure you’ve experienced that, right? It’s there… you know it’s there, you scratch it and it doesn’t go. You go about in circles to find ways to soothe it until it goes.
Lately, life’s been looking like it is tittering on the edge of major transitions. I know the common accepted consensus is that in one’s 20’s life is life-ing in pro max ultra and things are in a state of flux until you somewhat regain some control over your identity and self in your 30’s. Which I’d argue otherwise, we are dynamic entities and those changes go through until the grave. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks but the dog will learn new things and ways to do old tricks. I digress.
With all these transitions that are ongoing, it is like ending after ending after ending with no time for a water break in between. I acknowledge the common thought is “an opportunity to grow", “new beginnings in life", “a new season in life" and other short stories. I’ve had these periods of transition before and that’s why I think I am not bursting at the seams. This one just feels different. More … consequential.
Amidst this acceptance I must also see the way endings are happening. I am glad some things are coming to an end and this is not a cynical and pessimistic take but just … lemme land, cool? I have had those seasons of unconscious and conscious torment that feel like a sigh of relief as they come to an end. I suppose one has to deal with the vacancies of the weight on the shoulders once they come to pass.
Since it’s something one cannot wait to end, I don’t know many people who prepare for it’s absence. Allow me to bring to your train of thought that there is an impact in everything and when that impact is ignored it is felt outside itself. When building a wall and plastering it, if you push your finger into the cement, it leaves the surface uneven. It can be ignored until you are painting and you now have a weird depression in the wall.
You’ve lived so long in this thing that even when it’s ending comes to pass, a piece of you is still living in that experience. Every other part of you heard the bell. Got up and left. That one part deep inside still clings to the routine. To the safety of predictability. Weird, isn’t it? To grieve the loss of a negative thing.
I have endings that are unexpected. They spare no room to go through the denial through to acceptance processes. One day they are there and the next they are gone. Just like the first type, they come in good and bad perspectives. It’s like old cartoons when they are mid air and have the ground rips from beneath them. They are safely hovering for so long as they don’t acknowledge the lack of ground. Once they do, gravity grabs them. Same with these endings.
I have had mirage endings. Endings shaped like freedom and goalposts. A future thing to work towards. I am looking and working towards these endings but it feels like they are not forthcoming. Somehow they keep shifting just out of reach and I think those are the hardest to deal with. The tease is what kills the man. Death by a thousand cuts of hope.
The thing about these endings that the others do not have, is the possibility of transformation into a different kind of ending. The first one being an obvious release after a long while. One day the shifting goalpost stops and you appreciate the far you’ve travelled as you meet this end. Ready to begin anew.
The other side however is jarring times two. You have been chipped away by the shifting goalpost. The trials and tribulations you have crossed to achieve that ending and suddenly it leaves you high and dry. If you died by a thousand cuts, you die again. It robs you of the cathartic experience and replaces your desire with grief and you’ve never been good at goodbyes.
Maybe it’s not the endings that are the problem then. Perhaps it is the access the grief on the other side… to put it Frankly.
