The work must go on

Or: faith as a mustard seed

There are moments in my life when I get dissatisfied with the shape of it, the direction it is heading, how slowly things move, and when I get like that, when it feels like nothing is going the way I want it to, I grow annoyingly sad. Annoyingly (pardon the adverb) because, for a while, I am unable to shake it off, to gather strength to stand up again.

In times like that, I go quiet, moody—distant, my lover has once said. I lie in bed all day and watch time idle by, feeling useless, tired, and angry at myself.

The day passes like a fever. I wait for night to fall, and, lying on my side, my chest tight, pray for morning to be kinder.

Sometimes, it listens, and I wake up and the previous day is a blur, and I carry on with my work, with living, with loving. Other times, morning haughty and unyielding, the previous day spills into the new one and I can get nothing done for days on end and I call it a burnout or whatever new (convenient) word I find to avoid calling it by its name. I cannot pray. I cannot open the Bible. I cannot write or read. Thinking becomes difficult even though it is all I do. I grow irascible. It takes an extra hand (or voice) to pull me out of this rot. The hand of my lover, or a friend, holding me up, saying it gets better, or you’re making progress. The voice of God, speaking gently words of comfort and reassurance—I am with you even in this, I will make a name for myself with your life. And I get up again, aglow, ready to “go”, to “do”, until, weeks, months, days later something shifts and I am back there, wallowing, lying around, my body sore, my heart heavy.

It feels, well, endless. Like running—no, walking—around in circles: hopeful, beautiful days gleaming like sun on water, interspersed with, even eclipsed by, dark, dreary ones as long as a madman’s beards, and on and on. Because you get carried away with the former—the love, the laughter, the story that is going well, the great time in devotion—the latter sneaks up on you rudely and pop the balloon is a punctured mess wanting for air.

You get the point.

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Yesterday was one such day. It was bad. I did not wake up well. I checked my mail. No news. Couldn’t pray, couldn’t touch my Bible. Turned to an old Korean movie and watched a little more than half an episode. Got out of bed to do the dishes. Anything to avoid the room, the bed, anything to not waste away all day wallowing. I cooked. I ate. Pushed the feeling back, until, done eating, with nothing else to distract me, I was back there, slipping, slipping, thinking about rejections, about money, about lack—my salary was due at the end of the day and I could not be happy, because most of it was no longer mine (by the time it eventually came in, three transfers and it was lean as a needle).

I texted S. because he said he needed help with something and I really could use the distraction, but he had already figured it out and only had a couple minor questions. Somewhere along the line, the conversation shifted: a woman had asked him if he could work without pay.

Already down, I was infuriated. I was angry on his behalf, perhaps more so than he was, because I had two things: my anger on his behalf, and my own anger, my dissatisfaction. I would have bitten the woman if I had the chance to. I told S. this and he laughed, and then I dumped on him and apologized for dumping on him, for bothering him with my own issues.

He didn’t mind, he said. At all.

Some comfort. For a moment, I felt light.

I picked my notepad, an A4 paper I had scribbled a very short story in at work on Monday while waiting to speak to my manager, Ian McEwan’s The Atonement which I had not opened since I did days back and read through its first chapter in a breath, I.’s small wooden foldable table, my speaker, and my phone, and went downstairs to write.

I played a song on very low volume. One of the construction workers in the house being built behind mine was singing a song I knew but couldn’t place. Before me, potted plants, one rising up the house into a window, its leaves dry and ashy. I typed the story and rewrote it as I typed, taking whole sentences out, cutting out words, eventually abandoning the first draft. I finished the story, read it again, and immediately sent it out. Instead of reading The Atonement, I opened The Cheater’s Guide to Love and read it.

Soon, the time came to return upstairs.

I had, I realized, walking up the stairs, passed the day/time without wallowing, without lying in bed. I was feeling just as I felt when I woke up in the morning. Nothing had changed in my body. The heaviness, the sadness, the “gloom”, was still there. But I had worked through it.

I had done something I had never done: push through, work in spite of the familiar (crippling) dissatisfaction.

In my head, a voice: The work must continue. It must go on in spite of hunger, in spite of rejections, in spite of lack. It must continue. One must have faith. Faith in God, in the work, in oneself. The work must go on.

Like cold water in my chest after hours in the sun. Like my lover’s warm arms around me, her hair in my face. That small, still (familiar) voice.

I woke up this morning and got back to work. Listened to a sermon, prayed, drank Garri, watched skits, laughed, read some more stories (two short ones and a long one), went out to get battery for a mouse, made noodles, ate, returned to the table, read some more (two stories, one twice, the other once because I kept nodding off till I got to the end); then took a break, rolled around in bed unable to sleep, and returned to the table to write this. To say I am here, I am working, alive, unsure what tomorrow might look like, how to get through the new month, if things will get better, if an acceptance might come in, if the next story will ever be finished, etc. Also that: I am doing my best, I am doing my work, taking it day by day, and it is good. At least for now.