i know
i know
i know
that taking days off
of anything
is good for me

i know
i know
i know
that nothing is truly lost when i skip
anything
for one singular day

but there are still
voices
in my head
trying to convince me
that momentum is everything,
and skipping ‘just one day’
leads to skipping two
and then just one week
and just one month
and then a year will have gone by
and two
and ten
and suddenly
i haven’t done it
again
since that first day
skipped…

and let me tell you,
my darling reader,
that’s a load of bullcrap.

those voices in my head
(unlike most of what i need to fight against
in my own mind)
are not my own;
they are the voices of
[well-meaning]
family members
who got concerned
when i took a year
of a break
between one college
and the next.
but they didn’t see the next,
they only saw
the gap,
the ‘giving up.’
and i wonder to this day
if it was those voices in my head
that convinced me
that fishing college—
any college—
was the best choice for me,
even when i might have been better served
at an academy
or going out on my own
and figuring some things about myself
out
before [even considering] trying to push myself
into an academic environment
where knowing oneself
would have given me
so much more
resilience
to get out of the program
what i wanted to get out of it
in the first place…

was momentum the right driving force
to lead me?
did i need to follow
everyone else’s instructions?
or would i have been better served
following my gut
(like i did for that gap year)
and forging my own path
like other [more trusting voices] said
i would?

i ended up forging my own path
eventually,
but let this be a lesson
to those who would worship at the altar
of life paths
and momentum
to maybe hold off on those words
with someone unique
and trail-blazing.
and let it be a lesson
to those of us
constantly making what wasn’t expected of us
work in our favor
(even when we don’t realize it)
that we already have enough voices in our heads to fight against;
outside voices
we can just
ignore.