A Restless angel’s draft
In every book I have loved, there is a clear beginning, a rising plot, and a meaningful resolution—a steady, deliberate direction that carries the narrative forward. Sometimes, however, I wonder if God handed my own story to a restless, inexperienced writer. We seem to be running in frantic circles rather than advancing toward a destination, trapped in a loop that refuses to resolve into a recognizable arc.
It feels like the tracing of an atrial flutter—up and down, faster and slower, all at the same time. In an ICU, an atrial flutter demands immediate, decisive intervention; it is a critical emergency. But in my life, that chaotic, uncalibrated rhythm has somehow been normalized. It has become just another day. A high comes, a low follows, and the world keeps spinning on its axis—because here, chaos is no longer a disruption. It is simply expected.
This morning was especially heavy. There was too much work, an endless tide of queries, and no space left to simply sit still and breathe. I find myself wondering if these difficult Friday mornings are merely a recurring coincidence, or if something deeper is smoldering silently inside me, waiting for its inevitable moment to erupt.
Yet, I do not consider myself unlucky. I do not feel devoid of love, nor do I believe that this illness is the worst thing that could happen to a human being. It isn’t. Just last week, my husband operated on a five-year-old child. Watching a parent fight alongside their child for a single chance at a healthy life—that, perhaps, is the purest and most devastating form of grief. For someone else, ultimate sadness might take another shape entirely, born of different losses and quiet tragedies.
So, while I refuse to play the victim or pretend to be a superhero for enduring the daily strain, the sharp edge of it remains. Friday after Friday, the exhaustion returns with predictable weight. There are faces I would prefer never to encounter, and discussions I would give anything to avoid—yet here I am, repeatedly placed at conversation tables I find myself walking away from, again and again, carrying the heavy silence that follows.
In classical narratives, the protagonist is usually defined with comfortable clarity: good or bad, hero or villain. Sitting amidst the noise of my own life, I find myself pausing to ask a quiet, uncomfortable question: Am I a good person?
When it comes to imposter syndrome, I feel a deep, quiet kinship with Maya Angelou, wondering if everyone around me will one day notice the widening gaps between who I truly am and who I strive to be.
To me, being a good person has never been about flawless perfection. It is a daily, deliberate practice of intention and quiet growth. It begins with empathy—the genuine, unglamorous effort to understand others and treat them with kindness, dignity, and respect. It relies on integrity, the courage to hold oneself accountable in the dark, and a quiet commitment to leave the world slightly better than we found it.
So, am I a good person? I truly do not know.
Am I a decent one? I think so. At least, I try to be.
A story also requires something for which the protagonist actively fights. An idea, an ambition, love, safety, or belonging.
So what is it that I am continuing to fight for? That question, at least, is simple to answer. All my life, I have been at my happiest when I have a clear, fixed goal set before me. I am simply not wired to merely wake up, work out, go to work, come back, sleep, and repeat. That is an existence, not a narrative. Yet, of late, that mechanical loop is precisely who I have become.
If there is one thing I want to fight for right now, it is to bring back real goals into my life. I know I have written about shifting goalposts in the past, but right now, my goalpost feels as though it has been uprooted entirely, left lying in the mud, waiting to find a new place to stand. Having been driven by burning ambition for as long as I can remember, the sudden lack of it has created a hollow void—one I have been trying to fill for a year now. The brutal reality is that its absence pinches me every single day. To make matters harder, an unpredictable body in rebellion is perhaps not the most cooperative asset when you set out on a journey to achieve something great.
My story had a clear beginning, but thereafter, it devolved into a jumbled puzzle. I try patiently to put some pieces together, while others stand stubbornly as misfits. And when I finally force the misfits into place, the pieces that were once perfectly aligned scatter into disarray. Day in and day out, this exhausting process repeats itself.
I am holding onto the hope that in the end, when the angel writing my story finally puts her pen down, she looks over the pages and is pleased with her work. I hope that in the final reading, the erratic rhythms and jumbled pieces all make sense to her. And I hope that one day, when I am buried and laid flat into the quiet earth, the life I spent so much energy building is still standing tall at my head end—smiling, content, and deeply at peace.