Certainty

     She reaches down and intertwines her fingers with mine. Her soft skin rubs up against my callused hands. 
     “Tell me,” she begins, “What brought you here?”
     “I visited a buddy here during college-“
     “No, I mean here—in life. What brought you to this moment?”
     I think about it for nearly two blocks. “I guess I… I’ve lived my entire life following some sort of plan and… I guess I finally realized that the plan wasn't really what... what I wanted. I guess I just needed to figure out what it was that I did want. So I came here to figure that out, I guess.”
     “You guess too much.”
     “What do you mean?”
    “I mean just that. You guess too much… You don’t allow yourself to be certain of anything.” The thought floats in the air for a minute. 
     “Hmm…”
     “What?” She looks up at me with a smirk.
     “I guess- I mean, I never really thought about it like that.”
     “Like how?”
     I take a moment to formulate a thought that I am confident in. “Certainty… and its effects. Like, I was never certain if I made the right decision about my studies or my group of friends or my faith... so none of them ever satisfied me. Not because the decisions were wrong, which they still could have been, but rather because... because I always had that uncertainty in the back of my mind... I was always wondering if there were better options out there, better places I could be, or better people I could be spending my life with. So, because of that, I never could enjoy the moment. I was never certain that God was who we claimed him to be, so, I never found any satisfaction in him. Or anything, really. Maybe if I was certain about... what I was doing, then... then maybe I could find satisfaction. Happiness... Love."
     With the last word, I squeeze again at her hand. At the moment, she is the only thing that I am certain of. ​