From Must to Can

For years, my days were built on one word.

Must.

I must get up. I must go to work. I must answer, cook, smile, hold everything together. I must not fall apart, at least not where anyone can see.

I did all of it. Every day. And I did it well, I think. But I did it the way a train keeps moving after the engine has stopped: on inertia, on the rails, because there was nowhere else to go.

I didn't notice how long I had been living like that. Months. Years. Mornings came and went, and I moved through them on autopilot, getting out of bed only because the day demanded it. Some mornings it wasn't even the day. It was a wet nose pressed against my hand, telling me I must take him out.

Then, about a month ago, something small began.

I started writing. Then building. A page, a story, another page. At first it was just something to fill the evenings. I didn't think about what it meant.

This morning I suddenly understood that something had changed, and it took me a while to find the word for it.

It wasn't the amount of work. There is more of it now, not less.

It was meaning.

For the first time in a very long time, there is a reason to get up that is mine. Not a duty. Not an expectation. A reason. It is not bright and fluffy yet. Some of what I write still comes from very dark places. But it is mine, and it waits for me in the morning.

And with it, a word came back that I had not heard in my own voice for years.

I can.

I can write about the hardest things. I can build something from nothing. I can say what I couldn't say for years. I can choose myself.

It's strange how slowly the most important things reach us. The words had been coming back for weeks, and I only noticed today. Like light in the morning: you don't see the moment it arrives. You just look up, and the room is no longer dark.

I still have mornings of must. I suspect I always will. But now there is something beside it. A small, quiet voice that wasn't there before.

I can.

And some mornings, that is enough to begin.

Is there one small “I can” in your days right now? Even a tiny one. And if right now there is only “must,” that's okay too. Sometimes the second word takes a long time to arrive.

This story has a quiet video too: For When You're Living on Autopilot →

With love, from HerWay

If this story touched you

The Wet Nose and the Word “Must”Who Am I When No One Introduces Me?

← Previous story  ·  Next story →  ·  Back to the Journal