Waiting

November 11, 2019

The restaurant is decorated in reds and blacks with a gray crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling. It should be out of place considering the silverware is plastic and the floors are unfinished concrete, but somehow it works. We’re sitting at a high-top table on stools that I wish for the third time tonight had backs. It takes a lot of core work to sit on a backless stool and not look like a hunchback. I’m venting about yet another long and arduous day at work and seeing hopelessness swirling around the ice in my margarita as I’m talking about all of the jobs I’ve applied for and not heard back from over the last two months.

The waitress sets down our orders of tacos and nachos and right as I’m lifting a nacho I’ve been thinking about for a week and a half to my lips Kandace says, “Well, let’s just start a business together.”

My mouth is half-open for the nacho so it doesn’t look like my jaw has dropped, though it has. Taking a bite and chewing, I tilt my head slightly to the left and furrow my eyebrows. She steps in, “Madison, let’s start a nonprofit bookstore and an event planning business in St. Pete! It’s perfect.” 

Kandace and I both love small businesses and female entrepreneurship, and we’ve joked about starting a business together before. But there’s something about the glint in her eye and the way her tone shifts when she says it that I can tell she’s being serious but trying to couch it in a joking way in case I’m not into the idea.

I’m feeling a lot of things that I can’t name and don’t understand, but now’s not the time to figure them out, so I ignore them and we talk more about this idea. Kandace has eight years of experience in events and was an executive assistant in one job and a manager in another. I have nine years of experience in nonprofits and several years’ experience in event planning. We have complementary strengths, we both know each other’s work ethic and it’s similar and we both respect each other’s character. We could trust where we’re coming from, the excellence we’d have in starting a business together, and we’d be able to communicate when we disagree and work to a conclusion. St. Pete seems perfect, she asserts, because she planned events there and has the connections, plus it’s an incredibly small business-friendly community without a prominent bookstore, Florida has no state income tax, and I’d be an hour and a half from my sister and her family and only five hours from my parents and brother. It’s a compelling argument.

We talk more about it as we work our way through nachos piled high on paper plates and I finish more tacos than I should. It’s fun to dream and we end the night saying that even if nothing ever comes of it, it’s a fun hobby to have.

I’m sitting at work the next day struggling to stay focused on a Friday since the office is empty, other than myself, when Kandace texts me. She says she can’t stop thinking about the idea. I put my phone down before I respond because I wasn’t thinking about the idea, and that is unlike me. Anytime on my walk into work that I started to think about it, I switched topics. Which is odd.

It’s a dream very, very few people know I have to start a nonprofit bookstore one day. For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved to read. I was always one of the top readers in elementary school and my parents fostered that love of reading in any way they could. I also loved writing and was part of young writers’ programs growing up. Reading is how I escape and writing is how I think. Even more so when I got sick. When the only thing I could do in a hospital bed or waiting room or on the couch was read, I did. I poured through books, sped through books, lived in books. Reading was how I could cope with the emotional pain of my trauma while I was in the midst of it. Now, whenever anyone I know is sick, I get them a book. And bookstores offer an opportunity to be a place of community. I see the potential in a local bookstore to be a place of gathering. Which is another thing I longed for when I was sick. For years now, I’ve been dreaming of the day that I would start a bookstore.

So when Kandace throws it out as the time for us to start a business, and my side being a bookstore, I am surprised to find that my first thought is, “I can’t start one now.” I pick my way through that one. My first thought is that I’m too young. But that’s dumb. I wasn’t too young to start an organization at fifteen or too young to start a summer camp at twenty-one or too young to be a director of operations at a national nonprofit at twenty-three. So why am I now, older than I’ve ever been, thinking that I’m too young to do something at the same level of responsibility as other things I’ve done? Behind that lies the thought that it’s not the time. But how do I know what the time is? And why isn’t now the time? I’ve got experience, I’ve got a degree, I’ve got savings to fall back on, I’m not married and don’t have kids, I’m as free as I’ll ever be and still have a place to fail if I need it. So that can’t be it. I then think that it can’t be St. Pete. I never thought I’d open a bookstore in St. Pete and I can’t just up and move there! But also, why not? I have to start it somewhere, why couldn’t it be St Pete? They’ve got an excellent small business community and it is close to my family, I have friends in the area, and I have to start one somewhere so why not there?

I pick my way through reason after reason, knocking them off with logic but I know the real reason won’t be logical. And I’m frustrated with myself. I always do this. When I think I’m moving forward with life I find a reason why I can’t. Dating, employment, writing, I find so many reasons as to why now is the time I can’t date and why I can’t leave my job and why I can’t write a book. I feel like I’m stalling and I’m frustrated with myself. I would be good in a relationship, I’m a good employee and could serve a company well, I have something to say and want to write it down! But I keep stopping myself. I keep saying now’s not the time. I keep distracting myself with tv shows I don’t like, endless to-do list items, and spending time and money doing things I don’t want to do to keep myself from doing what I want. What am I waiting for?!

Waiting.

I’m waiting for something.

I’m waiting…

Oh. 

I’m waiting for a doctor to tell me it’s time to stop waiting.

I haven’t had a new diagnosis in a year and a half. Since that diagnosis, I’ve been told to “wait and see.” There are symptoms, but the tests aren’t quite catching them, so we’re just supposed to “wait and see” what happens. Something is never not wrong with me, but what we’re experiencing now is either in its infancy and we can’t quite catch it or it’s episodic and we’re just not hitting the timing well enough. So we’re just waiting. And I don’t feel like I can do anything in the waiting. I feel like I have to wait for it to be resolved. I’m afraid to take a new job because my current one offers me so much time for my health issues and what if I need it soon? I’m afraid to plan on starting this bookstore with Kandace because what if I physically can’t and I leave her stranded? I can’t do anything until I’ve got the all-clear from my doctor.

So I’m waiting.  

Perpetually waiting. 

But I’m feeling the tension consuming me.  There’s a friction between the knowledge that I don’t have much time and the belief that I have to wait for this to pass. Absolutely nothing is guaranteed to me, not even my next breath, and yet I feel compelled to push off everything I want in life until I know it isn’t threatened by my illnesses.

It’s convoluted and the warring beliefs are ripping me apart with an internal narrative of self-depreciation and shame.

I don’t want to wait anymore.

Because I might not get an all-clear from my doctor.
I might never get an all-clear from my doctors.

I want to start living.  

All I want is to not feel like my life is suspended, frozen in time.  

I want to put my illnesses in their proper place, where I’m neither ignoring the needs of my body nor only seeing my body. I want to give attention when it’s needed and still live the life I have while I have it. I want a both/and life, not an either/or one.

Truth is, I don’t know how to have one.

I suppose I need to acknowledge I cannot control my illness and how it impacts my life. I also can’t ignore it. If I start a new job and my illness rears its head and I can’t work, I’ll talk to HR, I’ll talk with my boss, I’ll figure out what protections I have under the ADA and FMLA and I’ll see what I can do. I have options. I’ll be okay. If I start a relationship and my illness spikes into something bigger than it is now, then I’ll get to see how they react to my illness and that’s getting to know someone, which is the whole point of dating, so I’ll be okay. I can’t control my body or these factors of my life, but I can adapt and adjust. If I get completely thrown off balance, it’s okay, I’ll see what’s around to help me get back up. I’ve done it before.

I can’t let the fear of my illness impact me more than my illness actually does. As it stands, I’m so afraid my illness will stop me from living that I don’t even allow myself to start.

Maybe Kandace and I will start a bookstore and event planning business, and maybe we won’t. Regardless, a bookstore is something I really, really want to start in life, and I can’t keep thinking of it as something that I’ll start when I’m healthy. I can’t keep thinking that I’ll start living life once I’m well. I need to start now. It’s okay to start now. I can allow myself to live and live well now. What that looks like for me will look different from anyone else around me and that’s okay. It isn’t wrong. I don’t need to apologize. I can live and I can rest. I can take steps to do the things I want in life and know that if something happens, I’ll get creative, and I’ll be okay.

I can’t keep waiting for a day that will never come.

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