Catalyst.

My wooden desk chair splintered and broke out from under me just as I sat down this morning.

Way to make a girl feel chubby, chair.

After any significant period of change, you can look back and pick out the moments that triggered it, those little events that seemed so banal and insignificant as they happened but turned out to be catalysts for unprecedented change. Sometimes you’ll wonder, much much later, what you would have done if you had been able to identify those cataclysmic moments — would you have let things play out as they did, or would you have resisted, refused to participate, rejected the change?

It’s hard to say, isn’t it?

Once in a great while, it’s possible to actually observe and be aware of those moments that will ultimately trigger the permutations of fate, and then you, or I, rather, have to actually make those decisions that have previously been nothing but fun little guessing games.

This is where I am now. I know that I am about to enter a period of great change in my life, and while I’m powerless to stop it from happening, I can direct it where to go. Or at least, I could, if I knew where the changes were heading in the first place. Right now though, they haven’t started yet. Right now it’s still about the little things — a phone call from a friend on a Wednesday night, a strange encounter with a distant acquaintance on the street, an approaching visit from the family — things that should under ordinary circumstances, seem otherwise normal. Things that I know are anything but.

I’ve done the same thing every day for well over a year, talked to the same people, visited the same places. And now, within the last couple of weeks, I’ve not only met new people, but I’ve had several ones from my past reappear. Other people’s lives are moving and my circumstances are changing, and I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to continue to let them change. There’s a someone who has been hovering just barely within my existence for months — no, years — and one of the events of this past week may soon force a confrontation. That I’m not ready for, might I add. My life has been stagnant for a long, long time, and the laws of inertia apply to the metaphysical, too.

All of the sudden, I’m feeling things again. It’s funny, this being alive. I didn’t ask for it, or for these feelings. I thought I had shut down all together, that I had successfully purged any vestiges of emotion and could finally exist in the way I find most natural — alone. But what is this new sensation? Joy? Hope? Love? No — it’s Life. Forget any individual circumstances, because they’re not as important as the changes they’ve brought along with them. Yesterday, I took a walk for pleasure, and I looked around me at the things I pass by every day, and saw so much for the first time. Last week, I cried, and no matter if the slight was real or imagined, because I was feeling pain that had to be purged and couldn’t be shrugged off or ignored. A couple of days ago, people were stopping me on the street to ask me what I was so happy about. I didn’t even realize that I’d been smiling.

Big things are about to happen. I can feel it. And I’m not afraid anymore.