The Waiting Game

Last night I saw the new Visa commercial. You know the one with Smashing Pumpkins' "Today" playing inspirationally in the background while people jump out of bed in the morning, ready to face the day, try new things and be better versions of themselves.

I'm fairly certain that commercial was meant to inspire and motivate me, but it did the opposite. I'm not jumping out bed in the morning. I'm not blazing a new trail or saving the world.

In fact, the things I used to love now elude me, like snowflakes melting on my tongue. They are just too fleeting to find any enjoyment in anymore. I find myself searching for a new kind of happiness in my life. A grown up kind of happiness.

I am constantly finding an exclamation point to all my question marks. A stop sign to my revving engine. I have become accustomed to my daily disappointed sigh and I can't tell you how disappointing that is.

You wait for a moment so telling, so epiphanous, and it never comes. Then you wait for a smaller moment. Something more subtle might mean more, you tell yourself. Then you wait for any moment, exasperated and aching from desperation. You start to be nicer to strangers in hopes that your karma will improve. After every sentence you speak, you pause awkwardly, hoping that in the silence it hides, waiting for a quiet minute to appear. And for a while, you actually are happier, knowing that the moment hangs suspensefully in the wings makes you think you have something to look forward to. And it too, never comes.

What happens when you are tired of waiting for that one glimmer of hope that keeps you balanced? What happens when that moment you've been waiting for actually turns out to be the heartbreaking realization that a moment like that might never come?