Something went wrong somewhere, and here we are.
I don't know what this world-this-life is I am experiencing that is so different from the running narrative, or why it is that way. Unless it is not and I am ahead of the curve and I simply accept it than pretend? Nah.
My current job is remarkable in its relentlessness. It doesn't cease, but it sometimes sighs. I look at my watch and think, mmm, lunch in maybe another half hour. WRONG LUNCH NOW THERE IS NO HALF HOUR. Plans are pointless, all of them. Every once in a while a window of nothing presents. I am getting better, learning, to ID those windows and also just GO and get something done IT WILL END.
I spend a lot of time these days in my apartment at night in disbelief the day appears to have ended. The days are never-ending, and yet every night I do indeed return to my apartment and go to bed. Sometimes dinner is after 10 pm or later, and sleep is only a few hours, but so far it's happened that it happens, every day.
While I am standing there in disbelief that I am there, it is also, after all the hours, standing in a sudden nothingness. Silence. There is so much I just stepped out of, I walk through the door with hours of weight and volume and velocity into this sudden STOP, equal, opposite, also extraordinary.
There is no one there. And as long as I've been doing this, voluntarily, I remain amazed that a man goes home to silence and there are no further words. In the end we exist alone. Our burdens are ours to carry. And they are luxury, editorial liberty. There are no burdens! How indulgent we are to decide actions of no opinion carry intent. Milk spills, it's not personal.
I go home tired nonetheless. I am tired, often to the bone's marrow. Tomorrow is already not a better day, there will be no better days, so here we are.
I stand in the kitchen and start to make dinner. I turn nothing on, I just want to stand there and not even stand there. And I think about all that lives inside me, all the noise and exhaustion. I wonder about other people's lives vibrant with end of day stories and conversations and seats at the table. The stories that are just of that day, the stories that are now sagas, here is today's chapter. The stories they get to tell. The voices they get to have.
Who was I talking to, it was so recent? Dying surrounded by loved ones. I can't think of a worse way to go, I said. Why TF would anyone EVER want someone to see them die? Who'd want to die with a bunch of people staring at you? When do we ever finally get to occupy our voices our stories our lives that are ours?
