Footnotes

What do I do with two years worth of footnotes to lessons I’ve stopped learning?

I read them carefully. My fingers scan each quip, joke, and cry for help, but even I can’t make out what I meant to impart. In a manner, I lost the many meanings of what I’ve learned. To my surprise, maybe it’s that I’ve finally let them go.

But that wasn’t part of the plan, was it — to let go of lessons.

I craved the act of learning like an addiction that could end badly. Days and nights spent on thinking of solutions, though without proof, brought me much closer to my understanding of the world. My mind begged for me to stop trying, both in the essence of futility and a lackluster motive, but my body moved on its own like clockwork. Only then, I understood my most important lesson.

Problems can be solved, but parameters cannot.

I am not in control of everything. That seems like common-sense, but being conditioned to chase freedom with great thirst makes it so that it is uncommon to question. I desperately needed proof that I am, in fact, not in control of a single thing. In the end, I got what I want at the cost of looking at my reflection everyday, sighing at how weak I looked. My composure was not centered, my expression was dry, and I could see time taking its toll on me. It’s a grim reminder that I am as finite as I should believe, yet I did not heed the warning.

I did not heed anything at all, and all that I have learned has left on their own accord.

These footnotes leave no clues. It’s filled to the brim with jargon I have lost to time. The difference is that I don’t think I returned to square one. It’s just that the weight on my back weathered along with them. In the same way that pressure has a limit, where an object would break, I managed to snap at some point and left nothing of my past behind.

I was reborn. There was no spectacle to greet it, nor a celebration to honor it. I simply woke up on the other side of the bed one day, on the other side of my brain as well. Maybe it’s a graduation of sorts. I have survived the worst of yesterday only to experience the worst of tomorrow. I have no control, and I am still studious despite it. These lessons do not stay.

They die so new ones can take its place.

I opt to keep it locked behind my doors, the history behind who I am now. I peer through the cracks every now and then, wondering if the footnotes would come up with new clues for me. It’s just fuzzy, blurry, and sincerely a painful peek.

Maybe I have moved on without thinking. I am navigating a space previously unexplored. I have no control.

That must mean I am doing something right, if that is what I need to realize this time.