Like fault lines in the earth’s crust, a gaping crack presents itself in the ceiling of my apartment. Remnants of leaks left neglected and unmaintained. It looms over the living room where paintings, records, and entertainment dwell. It’s just a room, but also a reminder that a rainy day can easily damage the comforts and joys in my life.

The crack is a culmination of stress brought on by the elements. This fall and winter were particularly harsh. Rain came down so hard that the streets flooded in areas I never knew were possible. Snow made the city a blank canvas, only colored by trash and the unfortunate dog poop. The world was harsh, and my rooftop knew it.

Last fall and winter, I had to navigate the inclement seasons. How I managed to navigate these seasons is beyond my comprehension, and it is still up for debate if I have managed at all. In the last 40 days of winter, as the cold sings one final swan song, I decided to deprive myself of escape. I decided to embrace my reality, stare it in the eyes, and understand what that gaze shows me. As I lie here and accept the crack’s existence and essence–just maybe–the crack may get repaired.

Avoidance

I can say that the fall began with pain. A severe pain. The person I loved so deeply wanted no more of the love we built. The pain of loss was just one of the pains felt. The way in which the departure happened also added layers of complexity and dimensionality to the pain.

It was a night, like any other night. I was excited because my goal for this night was to make my partner happy. For a litany of reasons, she was quite stressed. I could tell in the past week that she was unhappy as well. Clearly, I had to do my part and support.  I compiled a collection of her favorite snacks. I had queued up a show we both enjoyed. I bought wine for our wine night. It seemed like an ordinary date night. She made no previous communication of wanting to have a serious or important conversation. Blinded by the assumption that everything was fine, I went into the evening hoping for the best.

She made her way to my place and dropped off a book I loaned her. We discussed it a bit. I poured her some wine. I asked about her day. Told her about mine. Ask if I should get plane tickets soon. She says no because she is breaking up with me. I pause.

To say my initial reaction was my heart sinking would be a lie. It was so sudden and jarring that my initial reaction was disbelief. In my head, for some strange reason, it felt like a terrible joke–a jest of a strange and particular sense of humor. However, as she clarified and stood by her decision, the joke ceased. The laugh track and sitcom music turned into silence. I felt every muscle in my body get sore, and a sharp pain entered my chest. My poor eyesight became noticeably worse. For the first time, I had to see her face through the tears she made.  

She stated her reasons. These were valid, but quite opaque in justifying an abrupt breakup. I would be dishonest if I said I wasn’t hysterical for a chunk of the discussion; if one would even call it a discussion. It was me in my rawest state, pleading for the love I thought I once had. The love was gone, the pleading was futile.

In a later, less hysterical interaction, she informed me that she never planned to break up that day. She thought about it, but didn’t know when, and it leapt out of her. While not the ideal way to end things, I knew it came from an honest place. I had to respect it and start my journey of grief.

With this start of the fall being so heartbreaking, one would expect a somber season. However, it was quite the opposite. With parties, gigs, trips, and get-togethers, I was consumed by activity. Were the interspersed moments of solitude debilitating? Of course, but in a crowd, I was performing and engaging as I always am. People would comment that I was handling it all well, but little did they know I wasn’t handling it well or not well. I wasn’t handling it all. So the fall was festive. Not much space was given to my heart and its demands. Through the parties, laughter, and smiles, the cracks–in its most microscopic forms–would appear.

I saw the first leaks form around this time. In the middle of the fall, a horrible storm led to unprecedented flooding. I called maintenance to repair it because I was on my way to a trip. Maintenance made small, inconsequential repairs that momentarily stopped the leaks. However, I never inspected or knew of the changes due to my voluntary eschewal of reality and embrace of festivities. I was able to escape. If I never saw it or felt it, then I could live my illusion of a happy life. Fixed ceiling, fixed heart, and no worries.

Upon accepting my reality and removing escape as an option, the illusion I had believed fell apart. I felt feelings I thought were behind me. I cried long overdue tears. More and more still moments appeared in my life. In that stillness, emotions caught up to me. A sea of memories crashed into me, leaving the taste of melancholy and loneliness in my mouth. It knocked me off balance and left me floating and thrashing through this raging sea. The only way for me to calibrate and stabilize was to withstand the crashing waves and let the waves dampen over time. Once the sea was still, only then would I rise out of these turbulent waters.

At this point, the leak expanded into a distinct crack. A snowstorm dominated this city. Snow piled up in ways this city hadn’t seen in decades. It was all well when the snow stayed snow. It was freezing outside, so the snow could just be. However, when it got warm enough for the snow to melt, the water found its way through an old, familiar pathway. Through the unacknowledged micro-cracks in my ceiling, water flowed and grew. A large amount of water got through the cracks, slowly weakening the drywall. This eventually led to the final, looming crack in the ceiling.

Would I have been so unprepared and overwhelmed if I had just accepted my reality? I ran, I hid, and I closed my eyes. Only to feel my feet become damp from all the water that lay around me. 

Resilience

This winter was the harshest this city has seen. Neighborhoods painted in white, with winds that find their way into your soul. When you’re walking in that cold, it feels as if every step has intention and every breath is a little bit of you escaping your body. One harsh, cold breeze can make you remember every decision that led you to that moment. Your soul is filled with regret, yet you are more motivated than ever towards the destination at hand. The unfortunate, looming crack is now a fixture and the focus of my vision. Abrasive and foreboding like the oppressive winds of the cold. Confrontation is the only option that my soul can consider. The era of avoidance had ended, and the era of resilience had begun.

In this season, I had to confront significant truths about myself. I had thought of myself as brave, assured, cool, and collected. That was the character I played. I played the role well, but the actor underneath is quite the contrary in his disposition. I find myself uncharacteristically more uncomfortable, anxious, and stressed. For example, I have played music all around the world and played to sold-out crowds, but somehow I still get stage fright. I consider myself quite extroverted, a real yapper and chatterbox. However, I am drained after a 30-minute conversation. My persona may be that of a lion, but my natural state is that of a fledgling cub, too scared to make that first roar.

With no way to run or avoid the discomfort of situations before me, I’ve had to power through the anxiety. Well, sometimes power through. I think an important thing I’ve had to do is listen to that anxiety. In spaces I feel uninspired and unenthused, I don’t hang around long. Spaces with no color and vibrancy seldom have my time or energy. This lesson I should have learned a while ago, but now I have found peace in it. 

Nonetheless, if I did have to power through the situation due to obligation or circumstance, I had to figure out why the anxiety existed in the first place. Examining my stage fright, I discovered a deep insecurity about my musicianship and artistry. An imposter syndrome built from encountering and playing with professional musicians that I admire. The endless Instagram scrolling and seeing people produce sounds so novel and precise that one feels small and artistically inept by comparison. I never went to music school. I don’t have a massive following. I have no accolades in this space. Carrying these points in my head, I feel like a fraud on many bandstands.

As with my musical insecurity, my doubts extend to my social life as well. After navigating grief and other intense emotions, alienation and loneliness trail my every thought. Moments that I would have spent with my former love, I spend alone. Opinions–that would have me running to my former lover to share–stay just electrical signals in my head. Through media, ads, and just living in the largest city in the country, one feels as if they aren’t socially active; they are socially isolated. I have community; if there is one thing my avoidance allowed me to do, it was to grow and engage that community. My community kept me fed but only momentarily, like a snack or an hors d’oeuvre. My soul needs a meal. Subsistence that let me not feel empty and hungry throughout the cold night. I don’t crave social engagement, I crave social enrichment.  

Identifying this insecurity was the first step. It required me to be vulnerable and honest about how I really felt about many facets of my life. I’ve always felt these insecurities, and there was satisfaction in understanding and identifying them. Insecurities like the regret felt on a cold day walk will be an obstacle. An emotional weight tugging on the heart, making one move with malaise and hesitation. While this weight exists, the walk must continue. Harsh conditions will conjure up our deepest fears, but will also allow us to access a reservoir of energy we never knew we had.

Midway through any experience in the intense cold, a kernel of energy appears. It tells you that turning around takes as much time and energy as completing what is in front of you. Some call it being stubborn, some call it determination. I call it “fight.” When the fight shows itself, the body is communicating. The body is saying the destination is still the goal. The conflict between regrets and the fight is what I feel in any prolonged interaction with the cold. This conflict is not one where I stand on the sidelines. I had to make a choice. Do I give in to the regrets, or do I follow the fight? I chose the fight, now I must reinforce it.

My mother, who is definitely a case study in resilience and determination, always says, “Anything is possible with a plan.” This was my mom explaining how she reinforces her fight. I can only strengthen my fight by looking towards a path ahead of me. For every regret and worry, I decided to make a plan so that this fight has a direction. That way, I am not in the cold, wandering, and painfully descending towards despair.   

What I found was that the path my fight would lead me towards was connection. At the heart of both my musical and social woes was distance. Musically, I found myself distant from the goals and recognition I truly wanted. Socially, I found myself distant from the loved ones and dear friends around me. The only way to lessen that distance is through connection. I had to connect with more musicians and to more musical opportunities. I had to connect to my community on a deeper level. I had to allow myself to be embraced. I had to allow myself to be seen. I had to allow myself to be understood. The antidote to this cold walk in life was simply warmth.  

As I traversed this new path I have created for myself, I realized this conflict between my regret and my fight was not a conflict at all. The fight doesn’t exist without the regrets. But without the fight, the regrets, the goal is all but lost.  My regrets were my truth. They were my shivers, breathy exhalations, and cold hands. They were my teary eyes that could barely see due to the brutality of the winds of life. While the truths of these regrets were clear and visceral, my fight told my legs to walk, with every step feeling like intense labor. Using this resilience I’ve developed, I have endured these barren seasons with teary yet sanguine eyes, looking to the fertile seasons to come.

Re-emergence

Spring has come. The grief that held down my heart feels distant in many ways. The worries I have feel less like failures in my life and more like missions toward my goal of being the person I want to be. The goal of the 40 days was to face life sober. I found myself not learning how to face life, but how to live it. Instead of moving through life as merely a receptacle of experiences and events, with no rebuttal or acknowledgement of the conditions that stand before me,  I now choose to respond, change, and grow. 

I have started to move forward with hope. A hope that isn’t clean or shiny. It’s a hope that acknowledges the good, bad, and ugly that the road presents, but still knows that the destination is a happier, healthier me. It’s a hope that may lack in having a jovial, powerful, and radiant nature. However, it fortifies itself with action and is lubricated by intention. It allows vulnerability to lead in direction and intensity. This hope allows me not only to believe in a future but also to build it. My hope is not an unwavering pillar in the midst of a storm. My hope is a living, breathing creature that I nurture with every decision I make. My hope keeps me alive, but I also keep my hope alive. 

The avoidant existence I lived deprived me of this relationship with hope. Hope didn’t exist. How could one embrace the future when they haven’t acknowledged the present? These 40 days allowed me to start this relationship, and now I look forward to every day. I look forward, while knowing that there will be hardship. I look forward not because the path is shiny, clean, or even clear. I look forward because the path exists, and I know I can walk it. 

Due to the new warmer, drier season, the entry points of the cracks in my rooftop were sealed off. They started the process of replacing the drywall with an uncompromised replacement. I hear no dripping. I see no mold. I just see the ordinary roof I remember experiencing before this eventful era. With the roof fixed, I can now lounge in my favorite part of my apartment. Where my paintings, entertainment, and records dwell. This room, no longer a damaged reminder of negligence, symbolizes the rehabilitation and nurturing I must continue to pursue towards my joy and happiness. Under where the crack once was, one can look out a beautiful and wide window. Sunlight bursts through that window, thrusting the blue skies towards your eyes. I now sit next to that window with my tea, now just noticing all the greenery blooming in this new season. Letting the sun’s warmth remind me how far I have come.