Many Moments in Time
By: Nicolette Michelle
Tags: Failure, Pandemic, Life, Mental Health, Nonfiction

My brain feels like it’s melting. I feel like this past month went by in a foggy state of surrealness. Or perhaps, it’s just this entire year. I have suddenly become the melting clocks in Salvador Dali’s, The Persistence of Memory (1931).

I am stuck in many moments in time. I am slipping between these moments and feeling off-kilter. Each time I move between them, another part of my soul sheds away. Tiny particles float away into the atmosphere and disappear forever. I’ll never get back what I lost. I can’t seem to find my balance.

I have survived the majority of this year. That should feel like a blessing, right?

I lie in bed, dreading another day and I finally realize why I feel so distraught and mentally exhausted. The majority of the big projects I got to help work on this year have fallen through and I won’t ever really get to share my hard work with the world. The opportunities I had have suddenly been taken away, just to disappear in a cloud of dust.

This absolutely kills me. It kills me because it always feels like I’m so close to greatness. The old cliche, “So close, yet so far away,” suddenly makes all the more sense now. I’m always so close to finally achieving something that’s going to gain me more respect and recognition as an artist and finally out of the shadows. But then life happens.

Feelings of inadequacy, failure, bad luck, misfortune — whatever you wish to call it — float through my mind. “Is it me?” I can’t help but question. Or just the result of uncontrollable circumstances?

Is this how the writer’s who constantly get their work rejected feel? I don’t want to have a pity party for myself, but it’s so hard to shake these feelings of failure away. I know my ego also plays into it. My ego is wounded over and over again. I wish I could just lock it up forever. I wish I didn’t let it bother me so.

I had a dream a few months ago that I was involved in a car accident. I was on the freeway with two other people and it was a very foggy night. We couldn’t see very well, and suddenly, our car lost control and it spun through the air. Time suddenly seemed to slow. The only way I can describe it is like that scene from Inception when they’re in the moving car, and it starts falling into the river but in slow motion. The synchronized kick, except there was no La Vie en Rose playing in the background. Just terrifying silence.

In that painstakingly slow moment, I just remember thinking, “I’m going to die.” I suppose it was more of a nightmare. Before we crashed, I woke up. I’ve never had such a dream before. It felt so real.

I recently pulled the Ten of Swords from a tarot deck. It can represent failure, exhaustion, bitterness, betrayal, or playing the victim. “You’ve gotta be kidding me, ” I said, rolling my eyes. But I admit I have not been able to stop thinking about it since.

I know that I have much to figure out. This year has been tough for a lot of us. Our workforce hasn’t been the same, and we’ve had to pause and survive this pandemic as best we can.

Feelings of defeat do weigh heavily on my mind, but I must deal with them and keep moving on with my life like I always do. Another year soon comes to an end, and with that, another part of me as well. For better or worse.