Over-Easy

I read this book (see title of entry) in eleventh grade, and it changed my life. I recently picked it up again in hopes of changing it back. Instead, I found a much needed insight into what, and why, my life had become what it had. And so, because the ideas which changed things to begin with are the most accurate way I’ve found to describe my feelings, I’ve written my own chapter.

Life was weightless for her.

It wasn’t always like that; there was a time when she relished in the heaviness of things. Everything used to have to have a reason, a justification. She used to organize her thoughts and feelings in a notebook, exploring the whys and hows of each potential action. If she hadn’t had the chance to think actions over before, she certainly allotted time for reflection, contemplating why things had happened the way they had, and whether she could consider them successes or mistakes. There was a system in place, and the system worked. She was a rational being and her life was guided by her own set of principles.

Until one day, when she let go.

Maybe it didn’t happen all in one day. But gradually her focus began to blur and when it came back she realized that she was now looking at things through a different lens. This lens was not one where she saw her actions as having lasting consequences that must be thought through and accepted before anything was done. She began seeing life through a lens of weightlessness, in which her actions carried no trace more than that of a footprint on a beach, an imprint blown or washed away in no time at all.

Life was suddenly more free. She was less afraid to act, and less fearful of consequences. She began to live and act for the sake of living and acting. It was all irrational, but just because she no longer measured the worth of things didn’t mean that nothing was worth doing. She did things not necessarily because she wanted to, but because she could. Because she could see no reason not to.

And so she floated, meeting everyone she passed and experiencing what she could. There was no one and nothing to weigh her down with importance.

But there was still a weight in her life. He weighed her down. That term, “weigh down”, always had a negative connotation, but there was no reason why. She loved it. She loved the weight he brought to her life. She loved the feeling of her actions holding meaning, of her life being more than a passing fancy of outbursts. He was her meaning.

He was her weight, but when he wasn’t with her, which was most of the time, she had nothing to hold her down. The free spirit inside would begin again to float away to a carefree, albeit careless, realm.

The heaviness and the lightness weren’t better or worse, comparitively, just different. These attitudes seemed to be rendered specifically for one part of her life or another, and there was nothing she could do to change it. When her weight was not there, she couldn’t restrain herself from moving freely in any direction. But when he was there, she didn’t want to. She had no desire to live a weightless life when he was with her, but she had no want of weight when he was not.

It took her time to admit it to herself, but she needed him. She knew she couldn’t float above ground forever, nor did she want to. Still, though, in getting carried away by a life without worries, she feared that she might lose sight of and grip of her future. The last thing she could handle was a life spent constantly floating downstream.

Life would take the path she wanted, she knew, if only she was patient. It was all just a matter of time.

Posted on Monday, October 11th, 2004 at 12:10 am.