Creative Nonfiction on The Feminista
The Paradox of Standing Still
A Search for Self in the Spaces Between
I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at the blue-gray walls. It was 3 a.m., and the silence of my apartment hummed like the buzz of an overworked machine. In the half-light, everything looked foreign, as if I were a tourist in my own life. I could hear the city outside, just as restless as I was.
My mind was reeling, like a looped reel of film stuck on the same frame. For weeks, maybe months, I’d been trying to escape something, though I couldn’t name it. The sensation was like a pebble in my shoe, subtle but relentlessly there. So, I waited for some revelation, some shift in the weight of the universe.
“Just breathe,” my friend Ella had told me, her voice a mix of concern and exasperation. “You’re not going to find answers by staring at the walls at night.”
Her words echoed now, but they felt flat, as if I’d used them too many times as a balm that no longer soothed. I closed my eyes, hoping for some clarity, for my brain to loosen its grip on whatever invisible thing I’d been chasing. Instead, I saw fragments of my life — half-formed memories, flashing and dissolving like scenes from someone else’s dream.
I remembered my father, stern and silent in the way that makes a person seem like they’re made of stone. He always said the only path to a good life was through hard work and discipline, things I pretended to understand but never really felt. The truth is, I feared that in all my searching, I’d never find a way to live that didn’t feel like wearing someone else’s clothes. It was exhausting, the constant mismatch of wanting something intangible but needing something real.
That night, I grabbed my coat and stepped out into the cold. The streets were quiet, the air thick with the smell of damp asphalt and cigarettes. It felt strange to be out there, part of a world still asleep, but I had no clear direction, only the feeling that I couldn’t keep lying there waiting for something to happen.
“Where are you headed?” a voice called out, startling me.
I turned to see a man huddled under a streetlamp, his face shadowed, only the ember of his cigarette visible.
“I don’t know,” I replied, feeling the absurdity of my own words.
“Funny,” he said, flicking ash to the ground. “Seems like half the world doesn’t know where it’s going. The other half just pretends.”
I nodded, unsure what to say but strangely comforted by his observation. There was something about the way he said it, the tired acceptance in his voice, that made me feel like I wasn’t so alone. I wanted to ask him more, but he was already turning away, his silhouette swallowed by the darkness.
I kept walking, the city unfolding in soft, shadowy layers. Somewhere between one street and the next, I realized that I’d been waiting for some grand revelation, a moment of epiphany that would make everything clear. But maybe, just maybe, clarity wasn’t something that arrived with trumpets and fanfare. Maybe it was a quiet thing, creeping in around the edges when you least expected it.
I thought back to Ella’s words, wondering if perhaps “just breathe” wasn’t just an offhand suggestion but a map of sorts. Breathing, I realized, was the simplest thing, the one thing I could control, even when everything else felt like sand slipping through my fingers. I stood there in the middle of the street, inhaling the cold air, letting it fill my lungs, feeling the weight of it as I exhaled.
As I walked back toward my apartment, a kind of calm settled over me, like the pause after a storm. I knew I hadn’t solved anything, not in the way I’d hoped. But there was a freedom in not knowing, a strange peace in standing still, if only for a moment. For the first time, the need to be somewhere else, to be someone else, softened.
When I got back inside, the apartment felt different. The walls, once imposing and strange, now seemed like a familiar cocoon. I sank onto the bed, my muscles releasing their tension, and for once, I didn’t feel the urge to get back up, to keep moving.
In that stillness, I thought about my father, about Ella, about the man under the streetlamp. I wondered if they, too, had felt this kind of restlessness, this ache for meaning. And then, as my eyes grew heavy, a thought drifted to the surface, soft and surprising.
Maybe the paradox of life was that in searching so frantically for meaning, I’d overlooked the truth that it was here all along, hidden in the small moments of surrender. And perhaps, just perhaps, standing still wasn’t giving up but was, in fact, the bravest thing I could do.
I’m Ani Eldritch. Thank you for reading.
