Existentialism in the Kitchen

There’s something about a breakup that will send you straight into an existential spiral over the most minuscule things. When you’re doing the dishes, home alone because your roommate ran out for a much needed haircut and they’ve left the door to their bedroom open, their bed unraveled and the closet emitting the only light across their room. It’s then that it hits you, the limitations of things. The realization that you won’t call this space home in 2 years, in 10 or 30. And the complete lack of control you have over the spinning of the universe and the tilting of its axis and the change that this provides. It’s as though time is always an arms length away, but you’re never able to fully grasp. 

I think this is why breakups make me existential. Because I think about all the times I had with you that I tried my absolute hardest to appreciate everything in that moment, soak up every detail, become saturated with the feeling, the sight, the sound of you saying you things. I soaked it all in, as much as possible, and yet when I think back, I still didn’t appreciate it enough. I don’t think there is such a thing as appreciating enough. Because if we could appreciate a moment to its fullest potential then we wouldn’t appreciate it at all. There can’t be a ceiling to love, to fascination, to adoration. You can’t soak up a moment and be done. But this isn’t just about heartbreak. There must always be longing, mystery, hope, yearning for completion. This is the way the universe holds you, by giving you a taste and never a whole bite.

It’s the curse of mortality. A fleeting moment made up of fleeting moments. A never ending cycle of transformation. And all you must do, as hard as it may be, is accept the change and move with it. Some of us stay stuck here for the rest of our lives. Sure, say maybe there is something you can’t accept. There has to be a way to get the girl back. A way to climb the social ladder, land that dream job, manipulate the universe to work in your favor. You can try, and maybe sometimes you just might achieve what it is you truly want, after risking your dignity. But if you can’t succeed in it, you must accept. 

This is the only way to move forward. To accept the longing, and the feeling that you are always forgetting something, that you might walk through a door one day and suddenly remember what it is that you forgot 30 years ago only to find out that it was much more important than anticipated. That you might have lost things you never meant to, and walked through doors you never wanted to, but you’re here and you’re remembering and you’re trying.