The Tipping Point

It is deceptively simple how quickly a life can topple. This is a fact I learned only hours ago.

Complacency is a killer. My whole life has been predicated on the notion that "life happens," which is to say that fate or destiny or the invisible hand of god shuffles us around some game board. God, I can't believe that I built my life around that theory. When you write it out, it makes a lot of things just seem arbitrary. My inability to act in my life--no momentum, no effort, nothing--has just cost me the single most important thing in my life.

Sitting here, watching the cursor blink as it waits for my keystrokes, I feel hollow. Watching the person I have loved for so long explain that she can not stand by while I wallow in mediocrity, that she can not trust me because it's always words and no action... What have I done with my life? How did I get here?

How do you measure the potential of a person? I was brilliant yet unambitious in school, charismatic yet cold in social settings; at my jobs, I had a tendency to rise to the top of me field. Those indicators alone should demonstrate that I had potential. Or does it? Can you fake potential? Deep down, am I still that person that's going to really be somebody, or am I always going to be this sad sack?

Worse still: Can you squander potential? Have I procrastinated so long that I'm doomed to this existence--a hollow shell of a person who wakes up, puts on a mask, and goes about his day? That will not do.

I refuse to be that person any longer. My life choices--no, my life indecision--has cost me too much. This is my tipping point--I will no longer be a zombie. Today has been, categorically, the worst day of my life, bar none. But tomorrow I'm going to get things in order. I'm going to build something for myself. At every turn, I have disappointed. That changes now.

I will always, always love you, Terri. I will be the person you saw in me. I am so sorry that this had to happen. It would be so easy to resent you for this, to hate or revile you for upending my life, but you did not do this malice. That's what made it so hard.