A Small Victory

cabin fever

Sometimes you feel as if you are talking to a wall. You want to run around the world screaming Is anyone listening to me? You wonder why you are doing what you are doing, and if you shouldn't be doing something else. There's no direction, no definitive signpost telling you how many miles to your next destination. Just dirt roads and forks and beaten paths, and you wish like hell you had a map or at least a navigator with you.

I'm feeling restless. I get this way sometimes, especially this time of year. The days are getting shorter and shorter. Darkness comes at an unreasonable hour and the light is robbed from us a little more every day. It makes the day feel cramped and hurried and the nights seem to drag on endlessly. The sun takes its time getting settled into the sky in the morning, and it just feels dark, all the time.

You know what happens in the dark? In the twilight hours, or the dead of night or that eerie quiet of 5am when it's just you and the stars? You think. You think way too much, as if there is some spirit in the darkness that comes to you and turns your thought process around so you are not thinking about the day's plans or what you are going to wear to work. No, you are thinking about life. And death. And challenges or lack of them. You are thinking about things that go bump in the night and monsters under your bed and vampires peering at you through your window. You think about all those skeletons rattling around in your closet, wondering when they are going to topple out and spill onto the floor for everyone to see. You think about that blank slate called the future, and honestly, what's scarier than nothing? Than not knowing? What is scarier than having so much light and dark and days and nights stretched out before you and never knowing what is going to fill them, or when they are going to come to an abrupt end?

You lay there and think about your dreams and nightmares and wonder which of them will come true. You wonder how much difference you've made, if any. You think about loss and life, and those fleeting moments of happiness when you were 8 and blowing out birthday candles, way before you began to fear those birthdays. When life didn't revolve around war and taxes and the high cost of living, when your biggest worry was playing dodge ball against the class bully. If you only knew. If you only knew then what you know now.

Oh, no I wouldn't want to be a child again, no matter how innocent and carefree that time is. Because what do our children have to look forward to? What kind of world are they growing up in? In time, their monsters and nightmares will take on different, more grownup shapes. But there will be other ghouls and ogres in their closets, ones we never had to deal with. I feel bad about that. I feel responsible in some way. And maybe that is part of what keeps me up at night.

Yes, I am feeling very restless. Like I'm missing something, but don't know where to start looking for it or what it even is. It's sort of like sitting somewhere far from home and wondering if you've left the iron on. I forgot to do something. But what?

I certainly am not regretting where I am now. I am not unhappy with the path I've chosen. I just don't know if I should veer off this path for a while, maybe backtrack a bit and see if I can't find out what I've forgotten to do.

I'm just restless, that's all.