Wither

It smells like Chinese food in here. I swallowed hard, suppressing a gag as revulsion swept through me. My head was pounding against the bright fluorescent lights as I looked around the room. My back ached and I readjusted myself in the seat for the fourth time in ten minutes. This place was decorated in a way that tried so damn hard to be welcoming, that it felt like a trap. Everything just a little too clean, a little too cheery. The bookshelves lining the walls shining with canary yellow paint. The doilies on the arm chairs and tables stark white. Not a speck of dust visible. The name on the other side of the door visible through the glass. “Edna White; Life Coach”.

Edna opposite of me cleared her throat softly, pulling my attention back to her. She was so young. Her skin soft and clear, eyes wide and doll-like, not a wrinkle or blemish in sight. She was barely 26. Just five years older than me. Five years. And yet she had her life together better than any 40-year-old I’ve ever met. She was watching me expectantly as she cleared her throat again and spoke, “So what made you decide to finlly come see me?”

I blinked slowly.. trying to focus in on the person in front of me. My mind fighting to flee in every other direction. Every thought floating in and out of my subconscious faster than I could register what they were even about. After another minute I gave up on trying to recall what she wanted. “Sorry?” I blushed slightly in embarrassment, at the crack in my voice.

Her answering smile was patient and kind. The worst kind of smile, if you ask me. I was never able to tell if the person was being genuine or not. “I asked why you changed your mind, and finally came to see me. Last time I approached you, you seemed adamant about not wanting help.”

“It’s not that I don’t want help,” The words felt like sandpaper against my dry throat. “I just don’t need any. I know where I stand with myself, and in this life that was forced upon me.”

She watched me, eyes softening slightly, “Well, I have to say, I was rather surprised when you called yesterday. And if that’s how you still feel, then I can’t help but wonder as to your reason for deciding to be here now?”

I inhaled shakily. “I’m not here for me.” Leaving it at that.

Edna studied me for a beat, then thankfully didn’t push for more. She just watched me expectantly, lips pursed, waiting for me to elaborate. I shifted uncomfortably. “I just needed to understand.”

She leaned forward slightly. “Understand what, exactly?”

I tore my eyes away from her unyielding gaze. “How people are able to dream.”

Edna settled back into her chair, the old frame groaning slightly with the movement.

“I just -” My heart started to beat erratically in my chest. The fear of finally voicing my truth out loud, stealing any feeling of calm I might have had. Steeling myself, I tried again, albeit a little wobbly, to explain myself. “You know how most people like to plan out their futures?” Edna nodded slowly. Of course, she knew. She was a life coach. It’s her job to help people plan out a life for themselves. “Some focus only on the small futures, but most revel in imagining the life they will lead in 5, 10, 15 years in the future.”

I crossed and uncrossed my legs, staring down at my hands, eyes unfocused as I tried desperately to find the words to describe the thoughts that have plagued my mind since I was a child. “They picture how they will appear growing old alongside their friends, their families. They romanticize the idea of aging alongside someone they love; their gnarled wrinkled hands holding onto each other, as they sit side by side on their wrap-around porch, rocking chairs swaying forward and back, sipping lemonade as each day passes them by. Perfectly content in their complacency.”

I sniffled slightly, “I-I can’t do that.. imagine myself in the future. Dream of a future for myself. I don’t know how.”

My headache was thundering now as I held back my tears. “I can’t see myself in 5, 10, 15 years. I look to the future and see nothing. I can’t envision myself growing old. Creating a life for myself. Not when I know it will inevitably be taken away from me anyways. Be it when I'm old and decrepit, or young and healthy. The idea that any happiness I may build for myself only to lose it to something as uncontrollable as life isn’t something I think is worth it.”

My hands tightened and loosened around each other. Asif I could wring out my anxiety through my hands. “I don’t want to progress through life, thinking of how little time I may have left to accomplish all that I may want to do. I don’t want to succeed in acquiring that dream, just to later lose it. I don’t want to move forward, then fall. To search for the reason of living only to die moments before I find my purpose. I don’t want to go through the hell that is existing for the unattainable future, just to wither away not having reached it.”

I started to speak faster, feeling a dam break inside of me at the ability to finally speak my inner-most thoughts. “Because that’s what we do. We wither. Slowly at first, then all at once.”

I tucked my limbs in close, the panic at what my future may hold. “I can’t see myself graduating college, or falling in love, or starting a career, or my own family. I can’t picture any of it.”

“Hell,” I loosed a small broken laugh, “I can’t even picture me in a month from now. I don't even know how to try. I don’t want a life in which I look only forward in naïve hopefulness; to whatever life may bring me. The universe is too uncontrollable for me to assume there is any true hope for my future.”

I took a final steadying breath. “So, instead of looking forward, I've always focused on the present.” Glancing up, I saw Edna leaning forward now, elbows resting on her knees, index fingers pressed against pursed lips. “Day by day. Minute by minute. Second by second.” My eye pulled from her again. “The wonderful thing about the present, is that it’s ever changing. Every time a heartbeat passes, you have entered a new present. And the one you once knew is now the past.”

I straightened my back; bracing my hand against my stomach as I tried to reign myself back in, “'I don’t want to wither. I will not wither. I will focus on the now, and instead forever bloom.’ Those were the words that have kept me going for so long. Because, I refuse to depend on the future to provide me my happiness. I lived by thinking that I would force life’s hand and create my own happiness myself. But not later. Now. Right now, in this very moment, I would create my own happiness. Because now is the only time I will ever have this present at my disposal. So why waste it. That has always been my truth.”

Edna waited a few moments after I finished, weighing my words carefully; assessing the thoughts I provided her with. A few minutes later, she spoke. “If that is what you truly believe, then what compelled you to come here and search for someone else’s truth?”

I looked down to my shoes, watching as they pressed further and further into the carpet below. “Because my life is no longer for me. It’s for someone else. Because I have to learn to plan for the future. Have to learn how to be okay with planning for what may or may not come. Because, my life is no longer about me and what I am comfortable with, and I can’t stand the thought of someone else living this way, experiencing the crushing weight of the fear I have been forced to block out in my own mind regarding the endless, overwhelming, heart-breaking possibilities of the future.”

My hand tightened against my stomach, “Because I am no longer able to avoid my own future.”

Sniffing one final time, I lifted my chin fully, locking eyes with Edna.

“I’m pregnant.”

-THE END-