Make Happy

We're halfway through the year, she says, while the group stretches Monday limbs into the ceiling, and a breath gets caught in my throat. Halfway marks mean everything is racing towards its end. Halfway marks mean summer is almost over, mean life is almost over, mean you are running out of time and what do you have to show for it. She reminds the group to breathe, collects the frantic threads of our minds and the cellular phones in our hands, switches the sign on the door. I settle into a strange hum at the height of my temples, forget the space outside, and return to work.

Halfway through the year. Where were you in January? Where did you think you would be now? I look at my piles of lists, my pockets full of checkmarks, the unchecked tasks hiding in shame in the linings of my clothes. The truth is I don't think I'll ever be satisfied. The truth is I don't think I'll ever see my progress as anything but failed attempts at perfection, and I don't know yet how to measure that metric. An astrology chart lies crumpled in the corner of my room, mocking. What does it matter how we assert dominance over our own demons and feign freedom against the dark, if the puppeteer gods will pull at our strings any way they like and send us reeling across the Universe at a whim?

When the time was up, she chimed a gong and opened our doors again. I walked into the sunny Soho afternoon, blinking into the light and wondering at the warm air on my air conditioned skin, wondering at the strange and curious life inside of it. We break and we put ourselves back together again.

Where will you be six months from now? What will you have to show for it?