The first time I remember losing something I loved, I was sitting at the top of the stairs, knees pulled to my chest, sobbing into the quiet of an empty house, my house.
We were moving.
I do not think it was just the loss of the house I mourned. It was the music that used to come from the living room speakers. The way the light came in over the couch on Saturday mornings while I watched cartoons. The kitchen where my mom hummed while she made dinner. Christmas morning under the tree. Birthday parties in the finished basement.
It was like someone was removing a part of who I was, what I knew, what comforted me. My mother stood at the bottom of the stairs, reaching for my hand. Her face was sympathetic, yet hopeful. She saw beginnings. I was scared, hollow, confused. I only saw goodbye.
That contrast is the dance between what ends and what might begin and has been the quiet backdrop of my entire life. Not in dramatic collapses. But in soft shifts. A job ends. A season changes. A conversation lingers. Close family moves far away. And suddenly, I am in a new room with old eyes, wondering if I still belong. I have spent a lifetime trying to figure out who I am and what I am supposed to be doing with this one precious, unpredictable life. I have been decisive. I have been confused. I have built ladders. I have taken the elevator. I have sat on the floor of the metaphorical hallway, refusing to move.
I have learned that there is wisdom in the waiting. Even when it feels like nothing is happening. Waiting is not passive. It is sacred. It is the space where your old stories start to quiet down and the new ones have not introduced themselves yet. It is the space where ego untangles itself from your worth. Where hope stops being a strategy and starts becoming a practice.
The wait in the line teaches us who we are because it forces us to pause. We see people up ahead being helped. We get frustrated. We try to predict how long it will take. We look behind us, wondering if others are judging our place, our pace. We think about stepping out of line altogether and maybe choosing something safer, smaller, quicker. But what if the waiting is the point? What if the person you are becoming is not waiting for the moment you get to the front? What if you are growing because of the waiting? Not despite it. Because of it.
In the waiting, we are forced to listen differently. To ourselves. To our fatigue. To the whispers that arrive at 2 a.m. when all the roles we used to play no longer fit. You do not need to burn it all down to start again. You just need to stay awake long enough in the middle.
Possibility builds in the blurry in-between. In the child who cried at the top of the stairs, not wanting to leave her childhood home, and in the woman who still feels her sometimes when she is asked to move forward before she feels ready. I have waited in lines that ended in heartbreak. I have waited in lines that led me home. And I have waited in lines that were not mine to begin with. All of it counted.
If you are there now, tired, unclear, behind some imaginary schedule, let me say this plainly . . .
You are not wrong.
You are not late.
You are not in the wrong line.
Well . . . maybe you are in the wrong line. But I would not call it wrong. Just not the one you originally thought was yours. You are exactly on time, waiting for something that cannot be rushed. Keep your place in the line. Even if you get to the end and they tell you you should be over there. Something is unfolding.
Even right this minute.
Even now.
#finding #waiting #discovering #selfdiscovery #selfawareness #sadness #confidence #confusion #patience #thenwhat? #time #timely #building #stay