Waiting Room (Is It For the Better?)

Time flies when you're not having fun anymore.

The thing with being here is that we’re still here. For a while, I was 20 in a body that didn’t feel like a body. I could hold my own hand and call my own name, but it didn’t seem to fit. I wondered if it ever would again.

Sometimes you end up in places that you think you could spend the rest of your life in. Or at least a longer amount of it. In my small college town, I always thought I’d stay here for a while longer. At least ten years, I told myself. I’d graduate first, and stay until I couldn’t anymore. Maybe I’d settle here. Who knows. 

But I know, now, that I’ve always wanted more. That a city as small as this, no matter how much I love it, could never hold me for long. Not when I know I’ve always wanted more.

I still have some time here, a few months. And it has me thinking that, sometimes when we end up in a place we know is temporary, we allow it to morph into a waiting room of sorts. We’re anxious to get to the main event, somewhere that is not here. And so we bide our time, sit and wait, unmoving, uncaring, unappreciating. 

When we know that the life we’re currently living is leading up to something else, something we deem as “better”, we begin to treat it as an in-between. I’ve been warned not to spend my life waiting for the next thing, to not stay stagnant in these in-betweens, and I’m sharing that same warning to you now. But the real challenge is putting this into action. Because how do we normally fill our time in waiting rooms? We grab a magazine, or our phone, and engage in anything that will distract us from where we are. We refuse to live our own lives, because we want time to go by faster. 

Look: I used to think that there was no magic in these days anymore. And that knowledge brought with it a bittersweetness that I couldn’t quite grasp. When the sun rises and the pixie dust fades, and your movie-like life has lost its Hollywood glimmer and returned back to its mediocrity, you forget that this place wasn’t always a waiting room, but it’s become one due to nothing more than a lack of romanticization and gratitude for our every day.

We deserve to fall in love with our coffee routines, our daily commutes, our bedrooms and our showers. Sure, if we spend our time asleep and ignorant to the life teeming outside our windows, maybe this waiting period will feel faster than it is, and we’ll get to that next destination we’re so eager to arrive at. So maybe, we think, it’s for the better. But the truth is, we are doing a disservice to our past self that wanted so badly to be where we are now. 

Do you remember why you wanted to be here? Do you know what you’re doing? Or has it become like that feeling when you enter a room and suddenly forget why you entered it in the first place? The thing you were looking for has slipped your mind, never to be heard from or found again.

I’ll be blunt: I don’t know how to end this. I just know that wherever you are now is where you are supposed to be, one way or another, for better or for worse. You’ve traveled so far, fought so hard, lived too much to just decide not to live now.

And, okay, I’ll be blunt for you: I’m writing this as I sit in a coffee shop I’ve somehow never been to, in a town I’ve lived in for four years and fallen in love with during my time here. In a town I know so well and yet not at all, there’s always so much more to see and do and know. I know I’ve always wanted more; so I look for and discover a little more right here, where I am now, again and again.

Uncross your legs. Put the magazine down. Tell your neighbor your name. What can you do while you’re here? Do it now, while you can. It’s always for the better.

First and foremost: I recently hit 7k on Instagram and I am so incredibly grateful for all the support I’ve received in the last two months. It’s insane to me. I love you.

Second: If you haven’t yet heard, I now have a podcast! Click here to listen. You can expect episodes from me every other Friday. I’m so excited to begin this journey with all of you.

Third: I want to hear from you on what topics I should write on! Leave a suggestion in the comments, in my DMs, or on my Instagram story.

And, lastly: I know I’ve been talking for a while about doing a paid newsletter on here. I’m working on it, I promise! But life always gets me busy! In the meantime, I hope you enjoy reading my other works that are available for free.

I’m glad you exist. Thank you for being here.

Until next time,
paulinha <3