Simply Surviving

Sometimes simply surviving is the gift. When it dawns on the young adult, me for example, that the apartment I live in is mine (so to speak), that the money I earn working pays for the electricity to heat my place, for the food I eat, for the hotels I stay in if I choose to go away. What a scary, exciting thing. This written at 30. But it doesn’t matter. 30, 60, 17. It’s always hard to realize it. That you’re on your own. You don’t work tomorrow you don’t earn. You don’t earn you don’t eat. Or the hot water stops and you can’t bathe. Coming to terms with it. That you have to fight. That even now, so far into the future that we think we are. So far from the wild animals that we think we’ve come. Still we have to fight to survive. Still it’s hard to be without mommy and daddy. Old enough to understand that even those who are mommies and daddies had mommies and daddies. That my mommy and daddy did too. It’s hard for anyone. You go out there, on your own, to shovel the path or build the buildings, to teach the kids or sell the produce: to work. That’s what you do. That’s what you have to do. And too often it's in the dark that you have to do the long commute back home - always dark through the winter. Long and alone no matter how loud the radio in your car, no matter how immersed you try to get in that book on that train ride. Alone at the end of each day, the same feelings because the weak winter sun's long since passed away.

But then to arrive home, to your home if you are so lucky, to eat hot food at the wooden table you bought with the money you earned. To share that meal if you are so lucky to share love. To sit. To rest. To run that hot bath, to listen to the rushing sound of it, and then to sigh as you sink into the steaming water. To just breath and be thankful for it. The struggle of it.