“All changes, even the most longed for,
have their melancholy;
for what we leave behind us
is a part of ourselves;
we must die to one life
before we can enter another”.
Anatole France
This is why you’re unhappy.
You are unwilling to die.
Unwilling to let go, and be someone you’ve never been, because what you’ve become, feels cozy and nice.
Even ugliness.
Your very life and experience, full of violence or loneliness, and all other types of creative self-loathing that you’ve tried, feel very comfortable to you, especially if you’ve been dining, at the trough of quiet desperation for so long.
Change requires sacrifice.
Change demands death.
If you’re a melancholic drunk, you can’t take another sip. If you sweat on relatively cool days, you need stop shoving food in your mouth like its medicine. If you can’t write your art at home, find another place and get the hell out.
If you can’t do it at night, do it in the day. If you can’t do Tuesdays, do it Fridays.
Just because there is something you have always done, doesn’t mean you cannot change, and begin something you’ve never done.
Don’t fear going back to the very beginning, starting from scratch, learning slow, or falling down.
This is the end.
Your life ends right here.
It must.
Otherwise you cannot fertilize the life you wish to have.
You cannot half-die. Half-try. Half-believe. Become half-pregnant.
It’s all or nothing, baby.
The new versus the old.
But when you change, don’t ever look back at Sodom and Gomorrah. Don’t be tempted to look back while you steer your plow ahead.
Dress well for your funeral.
Raise your glass in a toast.
Send flowers.
And like the Phoenix, take courage, and rise again.
