By Way of Explanation, or Maybe Just Thinking Out Loud

It’s been an odd couple of weeks, or maybe months. In some ways momentous, in others like a hard right hook to the kidney with a fist wrapped around a roll of dimes. As I blink away the tears and try to find a few hours to sleep I’m stuck wondering what exactly has happened. Sorry to be so oblique, but there are names that can’t be used and trains still coming behind the ones that I’ve managed to take as glancing blows. Those could still be direct hits and I’m trying not to tempt fate here.

What I’m getting at, I guess, is that I feel like I’ve been missing things lately. Mostly little things. I’m good with the big stuff. The stuff that casts a long shadow and makes a big boom when it lands, that stuff’s easy to see coming. The little things, the ones that slide in like razor blades thrown in the dark, those I’m not so good at. There have been a lot of those lately.

My last post? The one about sleeping only 50 minutes in one night? There’s a reason those things happen to me. It’s pretty much always because I’m sorting through something that I don’t understand, or because I’m beating myself up about something that I’m fairly certain I’ve screwed up. It was a healthy combination of both this time.

I walk on wounds
That seldom prove to slow me down
I laugh this constant pain away
So you can't tell
But there it lies under the smiles
It drains me mile after mile
But seldom proves to slow me down
Here I go

I find that this is a pretty good encapsulation of the way I feel most days. Despite the fact that I actually enjoy most of what’s happening in my world most of the time, there are those moments where I’m talking to someone, or leaving them, and I realize that I’ve missed something, that there was one more thing I should have said or done. That feeling that if I’d just been more alert I could have made something different happen. I’ve reached a point where I am well and truly sick of this feeling.

There are conversations that need to happen. Actions that need to be taken. Most are small things, little movements that can tie off loose threads and simplify things, but it’s also the smallest things that shake the biggest foundations.

As I lie awake at night, my brain churning through all my mistakes, both real and perceived, trying to make sense of what I know I should already understand, I can’t help but wonder where the ride ends. When do we pull into the station and let the safety bars pop up off our shoulders so we can move freely?

How do we know when to pull the trigger as opposed to the ripcord?

Don’t fall, I see lights in the distance
They’re not far away
Stand up because the sky is turning gray

There’s hope in these footsteps of persistence
So don’t go astray
These lights get closer everyday

If the lights in the distance are really getting closer, then the next question I suppose, is whether or not the destination on the horizon is the one we’re supposed to be aiming at. When the road runs out and we finally reach the lights will we find the answer we’re looking for, or just another turn toward a farther off horizon? When we’ve walked the soles off our shoes and talked ourselves right out of our voices; when all that remains is action, will we know what to do? Will we pull the trigger, or the ripcord?

These are the things I wonder about when I can’t sleep, and sometimes when I can. They’re the things that hit me in the shower in the morning and that only recede when I’m kicking the hell out of myself physically.

So if you’ve noticed that something’s not right, that I’m not reacting the way I should. If you think my actions don’t connect with my words. If you’ve seen me staring randomly off into the middle distance, then you’ve caught me square in the act of being out of my depth. I know I owe more than one explanation, and probably a couple of apologies for the last couple of weeks. I think I even know who’s supposed to get which. Now all I have to do is figure out how to deliver. I can say this, though:

A destination, a fading smile.
Another station, another mile.
Another day gone, I swore that I will.
Be there before dawn.
So be there, I will.