Restless Ramblings

It is 2:00 am and I lay, restless, in the dark. I have given up my battle with sleep and decided to plunge fully into the fluttering vigor beating through my veins. There is nowhere to go at this hour, nothing to do really, accept sit here stewing inside myself, marinating in my rambling thoughts and this body that begs sleep.

I feel anxious. Afraid of something. What? Life passing by? Angelo thinks about this more than I. Each heartbeat, each clock-tick is a fatal subtraction from the total number we are allowed in the beginning. Or not being such a complete fatalist, from the variety of numbers we are allowed to work from.

Time is such a sham. It is so sly. It slithers past us unsuspectingly and all of a sudden the sun has set, the calendar turns, years pass, we find ourselves with a (beautiful) husband and two dogs, paying bills, worrying our ‘grown-up’ worries and amassing wrinkles.

Life wears us, no doubt. And we’re all here working through it without any real idea of what it’s about. We walk around with this drive, this determination. We make plans. We work hard. We move forward with our blinders on. We take things for granted. We lose perspective. We seek solace outside ourselves. And then where is there to go? Either we break the surface shell into the whistling void or we grind ahead, turn jaded, learn to live with the daily bread? Suffer and become Shakespeare? Paradoxically, we suffer and do not become Shakespeare.

We suffer and become cynical, angry, discouraged, sad. We throw our demons around and drown our pain in another more palatable distraction. I myself prefer baking a batch of cookies, eating the whole bunch warm from the oven and going to bed in a nice carbohydrate-induced coma. So in finding myself awake at 2:00 in the morning, husband and dogs sleeping sweetly beside me, and no mind for baking at this hour (although, believe me, I am tempted), I come face-to-face with my demons and the endless questions that weave my fibers.

And because I have not the ability or genius to write a big letter to the world about it, I write you. And go in circles, writing the same thing over and over again, asking the same questions that keep knocking at the gate of my daily (and nightly) reality. With any luck, tonight, I will spin myself dizzied into slumber, sinking dreamily into the night, black velvet sky weighing heavy upon me...