#reverb10 Day 29 – Defining Moment

I shall resist the massive urge to say something disparaging.

The fact is that I’m flying back to London in a matter of hours and I was knocked out when my dad left for work this morning so I didn’t get to say goodbye. This makes me just a tiny little bit stabby.

And now that #reverb10 is drawing to a close, I really was hoping that the remaining prompts would be wildly original and captivating; making us all want to dash to our screens and tap out a response because we just can’t wait.

*Allows tumbleweed to bounce past*

From Kathryn Fitzmaurice:

DEFINING MOMENT:

Describe a defining moment or series of events that has affected your life this year.

If you’d like to read about a single moment that meant a lot, please see Day 3.

But here’s the truth of it: every moment I have had the fortune to live this year, and every event – even the ones where I have sworn that the Powers that Be are drunk and pouring woe directly on my head – has affected my life. Positively, negatively, marginally and fundamentally.

Realising with a jolt sometime towards the middle of march that freelancing really wasn’t paying me enough to easily cover all my bills and put away money for rainy days in the form of car repairs, vacations, insurance and faulty computers affected me negatively. I withdrew; tucked myself into a ball and panicked silently only to be coaxed into the light by soft, kind words from loved ones, dangled like bait to draw me out.

Walking into the first day of my new job, casting my eye over the banks of desks and taking in the symphony of office sounds; printers pushing out paper, fingers flying across keyboards, telephones singing their trill choruses affected me positively. I felt relief so buoyant, it almost took me off my feet and sent me sailing out of an open window and into the surprisingly blue London sky.

Sitting across from the third doctor I’d seen and being handed in monotone a diagnosis of Patella Tendinitis affected me fundamentally. My world hasn’t been the same since. Stairs are my inanimate enemy and though nobody else seems to hear them, I swear sometimes I can feel them trembling with laughter as I march, teeth gritted against the pain up and down them. The gym is torture but I go because I have to. Each morning when I wake, I hope for warm weather because when it’s cold? My knees like to swell up so much that I have issues tugging my jeans over them.

Lying in the grass on a summer’s day while chicken salad and ice cold apple juice sit by my side has affected me marginally.

Giving my gloves to my hairdresser because she was about to spend an hour waiting for a bus in the snow affected me marginally.

Feeling tiny raindrop kisses rain on my face from Mister’s lips as I watch Mad About You affected me marginally.

Deciding to take part in reverb10 affected me first marginally and then monumentally.

You see, it’s the tiny moments that we often remember as opposed to the mountainous ones. It’s the spontaneous acts of generosity or joy or seeming nothingness that stitch together and make that wonderful, colourful patchwork quilt that is life.