Making my destiny mine

 

(This piece originally appeared on Rebelle Society.)

“I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

~ Jack London

I want to live.

I want to glow.

I want to use my time, but I do not want to fulfill my destiny — I want it to fulfill me.

I want to make opportunities, not just take them, and I want to push so strong and fight so long that my limits get tired of seeing me.

I want to know my capabilities as well as I know my fears, and I want to slow dance with my nightmares until I have memorized their missteps.

I want to celebrate the cracks in my armor, the scars on my heart and the pain from my past because I am proud of my struggles and I am thankful for the defeats that remind me that I was once hurt but I am still here.

I want to show that the struggle only defines me if I do not define the struggle and I want to prove that failure is success, just with a different spelling.

I want to remember that motivation is something within that I can’t go without.

I want to fall forward.

I want to burn brighter.

I want to transform.

I want to reminisce with a fond smile and I want to daydream with a burning glare, and in every slow shuffling footstep from now until then, I want to rejoice.

I want to mutter mantras to myself wherever I’m feeling the need and whenever I’m needing to feel.

I want to not care what the world thinks, says or believes about me.

I want to be ignored.

I want to feel alone.

I want to quit.

I want to give up and just settle somewhere invisible, somewhere sad where I can silently sit and betray myself all day long, somewhere I can curl up into a dark, tiny nothing and just sleep the whole damn life away.

I want to hide inside myself and avoid all of the work that needs to get done, and I want to be lazy, boring and pessimistic because that is so much easier than choosing to be happy, kind and committed, but I’ve never followed the easy road to nowhere and I don’t want to start now.

I want to remember that easy is a dead-end street, silent and empty as a lie.

I want to be better but sometimes I don’t want to work harder, and I get so tangled up and twisted inside that I feel like I’m nothing but a knot made of thorns, painful and raw as the truth.

I want to shrivel down into a speck of dust that blows along a sea breeze, not knowing where I’m going and not caring where I end up.

In this same exact instant, I want my legs to turn to roots, those roots to turn to concrete, and never want to move again because this moment, right here and now, is exactly where I need to be.

I want to get up.

I want to keep going.

I want to cultivate an unwavering, unrealistic, unbelievable belief in which I know, within every cell in my body, that Today I will do what needs to be done, and  Today I will do it to the best of my ability.

Today is my day to shine, soar and sing, because Today may be my last. Todayis all that matters, and Today is my day to feel however I choose to feel.

I want to feel intimidated.

I want to be scared.

I want to slay dragons and I want to save princesses but, most importantly, I want to get better at telling the difference between the two.

I want to be kinder to myself.

I want to remember to breathe.

I want to blow my own mind, I want to rip open my heart, and I want to show myself what it feels like to die trying to live.

I want to travel, explore, and expand, and I want to remember that I don’t need to go anywhere to do that.

I want to practice what I preach and preach what I practice.

I want to feel less like someone and more like something.

I want to let out what I cannot keep in.

I want to sing songs at strangers at the top of my lungs as I race to a place I’ve never been and never wanted to go. A place that will greet me with wide open arms and a sign that says, “Welcome back. How have you been? We missed you.”

I want to feel loved.

I want to belong.

I want to share and feel and burn up inside until suddenly I’m not down here, I’m up there, fast and alive, the first meteor in the shower, warm and pure and true, a part of something greater than I could ever be by myself.

I want to believe and I want to repeat: I don’t want to fulfill my destiny, I want it to fulfill me.