Someone working on the pedestrian path of Westside highway has forgotten to let the excess paint off their brush. Or maybe they had the foresight but lacked the patience; either way, it looks to me like a lonely thread of silk unspooling on the pavement. Smaller steps, smaller steps. On this early morning I’m taking notice of the cadence of my run with no direction of my own, eyes tracing the paint on the ground to see where it leads, how it all ends. 

Somewhere on the internet, I read that a little girl comes home one day announcing to her mother that she wants to quit gymnastics. Her mom responds with the kind of wisdom that I must have found worth remembering – first, because the thought of it emerged again one particularly restless night, and secondly, because I am here retelling it. Precisely, it is that quitting should only be done on good days, not bad ones. Mother ushers daughter back to practice the next week, and for weeks after that. In one swift motion, one hand waving goodbye and another already closing the door, she models this idea that we must persist because we often entertain the thought of giving up only when circumstances are difficult. So if we are only patient enough, if we are only strong enough, to endure the less pleasurable ties, we will be rewarded by a deeper sense of fulfillment. And we will not want to quit. Too conveniently, that is just how the story ends. 

I’ve always searched for instruction in stories like these, which so comfortingly promise to map situation to action. Conditional statements are one of the first things they teach you in an intro to programming class: 

if ( ): 

else: 

In the gap resting between parentheses, or in the space trailing colons, life falls neatly into mutually exclusive choices that can’t ever be wrong. But a wise mother knows not to tell you that the conditions you prepared for are not guaranteed // I’ve always resented the infinity of “else if”. I was 22 once, with graduation just around the corner – running late to collect the five bound copies of my senior thesis from the printing store, which were riddled with typing errors that I knew did not really matter. And I was 22 again, suspended in a constant stream of good days, waiting patiently for the little girl’s resolution, which I knew all too well, isn’t actually promised. I am 22 today still, when my first ever co-workers tell me over a chocolate martini, which I would have never otherwise ordered: this is the year that is the worst for everyone, but it gets better.