reaching the last page

this morning at the laundromat i did something i haven't done in years. i finished a novel.

this is not for a lack of reading, though i don't read as often as i should - allowing my mind to numb itself to tv or internet rather than ... rather than say reading and finishing a novel.

for more years past than i can remember - anytime that i came close to finishing a book and seeing how it would end - my stomach would become a little queasy or my breath, my breathing would become shallow. i would allow myself enough air to breath but not enough to feel comfortable. if i put the book down and distracted myself with something new or different i'd feel at ease once more. and so countless books rest of my bookshelves, never completed.

if i think for a few moments on this habit, it's nothing unexpected from me. i have always had a fear of things ending. i love adieus - the subjunctive and what is the other - super subjunctive. and there have been moments of being at ease with the future - though i have taken a passive lead with that one for some time. but today - with finishing my first book i have completed an event, a moment in my life. and there is a future, another action for me to take with and for myself. i don't know why i find it melancholic. i think there is an element of this action that makes me proud and is hopeful for what may come. but it doesn't sit easy. and perhaps you find it silly that so much thought for the next actions stems from such a microscopic moment in my life.

i'll leave with the last sentences of the book i read - which i did not see coming but i think is a good omen for my future:

"Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?" - lawrence dureell, justine