Nothing dared. Nothing gained.

The fortune cookie read: “Nothing dared. Nothing gained.”

It wasn’t the answer I wanted.

But, let me start from the beginning. The past two weeks have been tough.  Work has been more stressful than usual. Lala is going through some phase that turned my sweet child into an obnoxious nightmare.  One piece of bad news has followed the other. I feel like I am constantly pushing the edge – risking my reputation, throwing away time with my family and generally exhausting myself to reach a specific goal. It’s scary and lonely.

The worst part though? My spark is nowhere to be found – that go-getting, fire-in-the-belly, I-can-do-this spurt of creativity that has gotten me through so much just isn’t there.

I feel utterly lost without it.

Whenever I feel like this, it’s my tendency to crawl into bed and hide for a while. This is both good and bad. Good in that I recognize that I need a break. Bad in that it prolongs the cycle.  This time, I try to forgo an engagement that has been on my calendar for months but Abdo won’t let me. That’s the thing about my husband.  He doesn’t have much patience for self-pity.

He forces me to go here: Massmouth’s Where I am From Story Slam

Yes, I know. Getting up in front of total strangers to pour your heart out may not be most people’s idea of fun. But, I have this urge to share that has gotten me into more scrapes than I can count.  I walk onto stage, take a deep breath and wing it.  The weeks leading up to this haven’t given me the mental fortitude or space to actually memorize something.

I walk off and something in me has renewed itself.  That is what creativity does for us, it takes the ashes of our burnt selves and makes them into something beautiful. It’s why people read or listen to music. There is simply no better balm for the soul.

I manage to take second place and am then informed that I am in the semi-finals.  I didn’t even know there were semi-finals. The stern, disciplined voice in my head ticks off all the reasons I can’t do this – my work obligations, Lala, that there are only 24 hours in the day, that you can’t have it all, etc.

But, there’s this second voice that whispers of my heart’s desire and not my life’s needs.  And this second voice tells me that I need this more than anything else.  That this is where I can find what I have spent a lifetime looking for.

As refreshing as the break was, I wake up the next morning tired and rebellious. I want to skip work like some truant teenager. I want to scream and kick.  I want to turn off my phone and not answer one email. But, I don’t.  No matter how much I hate it – I am actually an adult with a toddler who relies on me and a husband who should know better.

I take myself out to sushi hoping that at least lunch will brighten my day.  As the bill and fortune cookie are set before me, I eye the cookie and try to guess what is says.  I want it to say something inspiring and reassuring. Something like “You will find a way.” “At the end of darkness, there is light.” Something to tell me that I am going to make it, that not everything is in vain.

Instead its message is simple, “Nothing dared. Nothing gained.”

And I laugh at myself for the first time in weeks.

Spring Cleaning

After a long time of blind, rebellious fighting, I have been drifting, waiting in my own cocoon. There is something active about waiting, about stepping out of the stream of your life and observing it pass by.  It’s not the type of movement we are accustomed to. Instead, it is a resistance to movement, the equal and opposite reaction of pushing forward.  And it can be just as powerful.

As I detach, I can see the tapestry of my life. It is filled with black, grey and white; a shading of different obligations and duties, so little color and less passion, constricted.  When did this bleakness take over?  I don’t know.  I just know that I no longer want to look at it.

They say that babies who are not held enough fail to thrive.  To me, humans without pleasure fail to thrive as well. Pleasure tells us that there is something worth holding onto in the world; that all we work and strive for is worth it.

In my hunger, I take myself to the Dance Complex in Cambridge.  All my life, I have been drawn to places with creative energy.  They feed my soul and I latch on, sucking in sustenance.  Secretly, I have always thought that I wasn’t quite good enough or qualified enough to be there; as if there was someone standing at the door with some magical checklist I couldn’t pass. So, I kept myself behind an invisible barrier, my nose pressed up to the glass – watching as my breath fogs up the window.

The class starts, the music pulsating. That old voice returns – you’re not doing it right, you shouldn’t be here. But I am too hungry to listen. I arrive home from the class, sweating and a little giddy.  The house looks like a cocoon where I have hoarded things – piles of books stacked in corners, papers scattered over my desk, cooking items I haven’t used in years stuffed away in closets, clothes overflowing in the drawers. I feel suffocated.

That’s when it starts.  I like to call it spring cleaning but it was more like a fanatical pursuit of white space; something to draw a new tapestry on.  Enough, enough. The word keeps surging through my head as magazines get tossed, clothes and books are packed up for charity, unused items packed up for storage.

Two days later, it’s done. It’s still a cocoon, just a cleaner one.