Struggling against the almighty tides of eventuality

If life were like a yarn twisted about, what kind of clothing would your existence make? It seems like one of those stupid questions that stupid people ask to get stupid responses that people think are deep. There’s nothing really to it. Your life isn’t cloth, it’s flesh and blood and bone and pain and misery. That’s what I’ve always thought, what I’ll always think. Sometimes people get fooled by the shadow of their fathers and mothers, and think there’s someone watching over their shoulder, but it’s just a tree scraping against the window, nothing more.

We’re all just empty little hobgoblins pressing up against the roof of our world, with most ignorant of the quiet vacuum lying just beyond. It’s big, and it’s cold, and it’s empty. Our lives, they’re just a fraction of a blink to a universe that’s only now waking up. Even the people who “matter” are just insects crawling next to us. They found a tiny little crumb to make them seem important, but they all died too, when the ever-impending flood rose up and washed them away. Maybe the stupid and the lazy have it right; you’re going to die, you’re going to end up not mattering in the slightest, and you’re going to be alone; why bother making anything bigger out of it than it is?

I want to matter, I want to be important. But a flash in the pan is nothing to write home about, and the soup will still be cold. Even if I could turn this world into a burning star with my passion, the stars themselves die long before the space that birthed them could be considered young. Why am I fighting, then?

I don’t know.

I should get that printed on a shirt.

Been feeling down lately. Wait, what am I talking about? I’ve been down for a long time. Every now and then I’ll get into a little episode of depression, just like most of us humans. It’s normally inexplicable, and equally harmless. Most times homoeostasis is returned within mere days, but I’m starting to think I may actually have a depression problem.

At first, I thought it was just a bout of homesickness. I don’t particularly care for my life at the moment. So far I’ve managed to convince myself it’s merely a transition–I must simply “hang in there” as it were, while my beloved girlfriend completes nursing school, which will allow us to move anywhere we please–or so the theory goes. The problem with this is I can only convince myself for so long. The cold hard truth is that there is a big difference between plans and reality, and reality has never seemed to have much of a predisposition for conforming to my plans–in fact, it seems to almost have its own plan for my life. I would prefer it left it to me. I find that reality is almost always wrong.

My friends from back home ask me what I’m doing in Baltimore, and when I tell them I work for an engineering company that has me write computer software for the government they’re pretty impressed–if only I were also. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’m no longer particularly interested in it. In fact, when I coded as a hobby I vowed I would never rely on it for a paycheck, simply because I cannot maintain an interest in some arbitrary project. I have the “open source itch,” as it’s come to be known. That is, I have an urge to code particular things I’m interested in, and not something that a project manager tells me to code. Fortunately I’m not in that situation–I get to code however I want, with whatever method, style, or language I prefer–but I still don’t get to pick what I code. When I first started this job I ran at full speed; I completed two major projects in the first three months, one of which had been in limbo for nearly three years. I am good at what I do, I just don’t like what I do.

So what do I want to do? Due to various encounters–positive and negative–with the healthcare profession, I would very much like to attend medical school and work as a pain management physician. I don’t know if I’m smart enough, and I don’t think I’m young enough. If I wait until my girlfriend has finished nursing school I will be–at the minimum–three years shy of thirty before I can even start pre-med. I just can’t convince myself this is a realistic thing to do, especially seeing as how we have plans to start a family around that time.

I dreadfully find that I have fallen into the exact same predicament most members of our society do–one that I promised myself I would never be trapped into: not achieving my dreams. Most of us have something happen in their early twenties, and you think “oh, I’ll just wait a year until I can figure this out,” or “I’ll just take a few years to get this right,” and then you turn around and it’s been five, seven, ten years. I’ve spent a mere twenty-three years on this planet–four of them taken away by intractable pain that isn’t stopping anytime soon–and already I feel the pressure of time slowly pushing me farther and farther from my dreams.

I see my friends saving money, buying houses, having families; I see me stuck, as if running in a dream: never quite able to catch what you’re chasing. No matter how hard and fast you run, it only gets farther anyway. I’m very afraid that I’ll become like so many blue-collar families–like my own parents: spending their entire lives attempting to ensure a better one for their children. That’s simply not what my life was made for. It was made for greater things than these.

I’m staring down the nearly-empty aisle of trees; they’ve nothing but the morning mist keeping them company.  Soon it’ll be too cold for those mists: I can already feel the summer dying, deep in my bones.  Each moment is a step closer to the frigid winter, when Mother Nature’s nurturing warm embrace turns into an icy grip, crushing what it once created.

I know it’s all a cycle; you don’t have to tell me that.  Some day, a season or two down, from those dead things will spring new life.  But still and still, I can’t help but feel those last gasps of the life that is now.  It still struggles, against the almighty tides of eventuality, to hang on to whatever purchase it has for just a moment longer.  I watch as a leaf drifts, almost casually, down to the dirt.

Weeping willows at their height have no tears like an oak in the fall.

Autumn Oak - Click through to purchase a print

I’m laying here, tugging at my brain, trying to pull it out of the sludge that doesn’t seem to stop coating it in ever more thick layers these days.  Something breaks free.  It’s just another piece of flaking paint covering the walls of my so-called life.

Back in the day, I was filled with promise, or so they would say.  I guess they say that about everyone.  Of course, I believed them.  I was one of the smartest people I knew, and I was barely even giving it a good-faith effort.  I’ve lost all my faith now.

Sometimes I feel a slight glimmer of hope, underneath all this crushing tide of sameness forever washing over me.  Sometimes, I think of what might be, if I can break free of the mire.  I’ve wanted to fly for years.  The runway’s always over the next hill.  I can see it, before the next wave rushes over my head again.

Some day, some day, and it’s always some day, I’ll do it.  I’ll take off, and fly away and never come back to this dreadful place…this dreadful place here inside myself.  My soul is atrophied, but maybe all it needs is a little fresh air, up in the sky.  It’s always some day.  But not tomorrow; tomorrow will be the same day.