Afterthoughts
It's the after-thoughts, the thoughts about what comes after, the afterwards, that are the hardest things to imagine. Whatever's next. Whatever the new normal is. What comes after 'this', whatever 'this' is; the trauma, the heartache, the celebration, the achievement, the event.
Life on the other side of adolescence. When high-school is finished. When college is done. After you're all grown up. After you realize you really haven’t at all.
Once you've echoed your vows. After the divorce papers are signed.
The day after the diagnosis. After the treatment. After the tests come back clear. The instant after the recurrence, when they find it back again.
The moment just beyond getting everything you ever wanted. The one immediately after you've lost it all.
Before death. After taxes.
The place where the story finally starts, or where it's forced to start all over again, like everything up to this point was just a preamble.
When the future finally begins. When you discover it never really does.
"We are never inside the future”, Matt Haig says. “We are [always] outside the door. We have our hand on the handle…But we never know what is on the other side". We turn the knob. Cross the divide, only to find, another door, another handle. We follow the white rabbit. We grow larger. We grow smaller. We learn as we go. But there is no moving past this moment. Everything leads to ‘here’. We can only arrive at ‘now’. It’s doors and handles all the way down.
You are always at the beginning of your story, and yet your story has been unfolding all along. Between possibility and destiny, necessity and circumstance. The writer, the painter, the potter. The pen, the paper, the canvas, the clay. The maker and the making. The shaping and the shape. What was done to us, what we choose to do.
Before doesn't matter. After never happens. The only 'next' is now.