Second grade, Mrs. McCoy’s classroom. I doubt you remember this, but I do. We went around the room and we all said what we wanted to be when we grew up.

When I was younger, I wish someone had told me straight-up that not all adults experience “a calling”. That many of them never find particular purpose in a career. That sometimes, their job is just what pays the bills and they have to seek satisfaction and fulfillment elsewhere. 

Because as an adult, this pervasive notion that there exists a perfect path for everyone, that people should love what they do, and that work is meant to function as a vehicle for fulfilling a person’s grand life destiny is not only inaccurate for many of us, it can be toxic.

The ideal is so ingrained that I have to remind myself constantly I’m not a failure because I don’t adore my job, and because I’m not rocking the world with my work. That is okay. 

Sometimes, work is just work. There isn’t always a perfect career path, magically waiting to be discovered. There might not be this THING you were born to do. Sometimes, you discover that what you really want to be when you grow up is “paid”.

the seventeenth of august.

I like the beach, but I don’t like the crowds. I like the beach when it’s alone, when it’s just me and the laughing waves, the whispering sand, the dancing wind. I like the beach at night, when you can’t see the infinite swelling of the water but you can hear it. You can almost touch it, too, even as you stand there unsure if it’s there at all. It’s the loudest darkness.

I want to come here with you and trek slowly through the sand—run in a sandstorm—climb aboard the lifeguard bench express—fight for the best cuddle spot—melt into one another—trace circles and shadows of muted words on each other’s palms—and look out into the profound beyond, letting the lullaby of the tides wash away the oil the world has left on our skin and pull us into a heavy-lidded state of consciousness, until the only things left are the ocean’s gentle kisses on our faces and your breath in my hair and the glorious silence passing between us through the touch of our fingertips.

I don’t know who you are, but one day I want to come here with you.

The water is almost brown here, but you wouldn’t mind. We would both find it beautiful. We would recognize the way it has, in its tainted form, become a reflection of the people who swim in it. The water begs us, beseeches us, but with every lunge it comes no nearer, and, safe from its grip, we are fearless, doing nothing, doing everything, ignoring its plea and missing the way the world’s irises grow dilated and murky.

I am always at such odds with myself, caught between my reverence and enthusiasm for the miracle of human consciousness and my shattered heart over the calamity of human error.

It becomes so difficult to imagine people complexly when all we see is their hatred. So simple, so destructive a thing.

Like falling in love.  Or so I’d think, anyway. 

I want to come here with you.

So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be

x

Hannah Colfer is trending

This is amazing.

I want this. I want this BAD.