5.05.2006

Lil Ol' Me


What do we do with the bad days? I mean the really bad days, the days when our perspective is so clouded and confused that the only reasonable response is to cry and hide.

That would be today.

A day when nothing of note happened. A day when a meeting created the remote possibility of work, emphasis on remote. Sometimes being presented with what could be is the equivalent to rubbing your face in what isn’t.

That would be today.

And since that hour this morning, I have been useless. Starting much and finishing nothing. Wandering and wondering. Wanting to talk to everybody, yet hiding from all. And now I wait for the sun to go down so I have permission to assume the night stance, a time when I allow myself to stop seeking what I lack.

But the days are getting longer, and I have much time to kill. Time that some of my friends may not have. Yesterday’s phone brought word of two possibly impending deaths. And today, a stumble upon a former coworker’s website reveals his wait for a pair of lungs so that he can go on breathing. And here I was crying because I felt lost.

And their race with time makes me conscious that if it were my race, I’d feel so far behind, not yet saying what I must say or doing what I must do or loving as I must love.

We don’t tell children how hard life can be, perhaps because we don’t want to worry or scare them, but then they arrive in adulthood completely untrained to cope with the new terrain.

That would be today.

And I figure the only way to deal with today is for it to be tomorrow, a wishing for the passage of time that I’ve always railed against. But sometimes I must allow myself to be weak rather than complaining that I’m not strong. Sometimes I must allow myself to feel sad even when I know I should feel grateful.

Yet the night is not eager to allow me my peace, as if I must still confront the lesson I am denying, the lesson I can’t seem to comprehend. Jolting awake at two a.m., I reach for my dog for comfort, but he growls as I startle him with my touch, snarling as if saying, “this is your problem, not mine.” And that makes me feel even more alone and lost.

And because I am who I am, I look for meaning, imagining myself as the processor of everyone’s pain, here to digest and spew to make it easier for others. And then I blush with embarrassment over my crazy, grandiose thoughts. Lil ol’ me.

1 comment:

dweezila said...

in the car this afternoon i got lost with my kids trying to find this place i was supposed to have them at by 3. I started to lose it; got agitated, felt the tears...it was a culmination of all the bad days and now the whole thing was threatening to spill over because I didn't know where I was supposed to take them. At that moment the older one lay her hand on my shoulder and she said, it's okay mom, we'll find it. And the little one lay her hand on her sister's hand and she said, yeah, it'll be okay mom. And we found the place and it was okay, but made so much better by the love, those little hands, their understanding. Just one of those days babe. I hear ya.