Amanda Salisbury

I wrote this and put it on my bedroom wall back in 2010:

In this moment
lies every moment –
the strength of our victory;
the vulnerability of our failure;
the beauty of our unity;
the brilliance of our difference;
the comfort of our suffering;
the joy of our bliss.
The singular chance of us lies complete in this moment.

It’s part of a longer poem and it accurately represented how I felt for a long time. I shared this thinking with a counselor a few years ago. She said, “You put too much on a single moment.”

I didn’t like it. I didn’t like what she said. For me, there was so much weight in every moment. A moment contained everything – past, present, future. It shouldered the possibilities of all possibilities. Though I didn’t realize at the time, heavy moments sunk me to the bottom of the ocean floor, cold, blinded, deaf, drowned.

It took about four years to understand what that counselor said. For a few months now, I’ve wanted to repaint the bedroom wall. As a poetic notion, it still attracts me. As a life strategy, it no longer works.

I had to unpack the poor little moment. I had to give away all the unloaded baggage so I could breathe. So I could choose. So I could live.

Now my moments are full of possibility but free as air. The difference is tangible. I am free to taste, touch, smell, hear, see. It plugs me into the world around me, the world of light and breeze, of hugs and sunshine-smelling boys.

In this moment – that’s all that remains of my old thinking. The rest fell away. Now I am living.

In this moment.