Gnawing at My Ankle

I miss curiosity. I miss the days when I could stare at the sun for hours (despite clear warnings not to) and ponder what made it burn so bright. Bright and painful, burning my corneas while the other kids' screams of joy faded in the background. I miss being able to bury my head in the sand and find my own world. I miss the buzzes of creation flashing like lightning bugs around my head after I saw a new thing. I miss a time when the highway of ideas ran nonstop instead of only thinking of bills and money and how I can climb the slippery walls of the maze I'm trapped in and escape the rat race. I miss the days of having nothing to worry about except whether or not it would rain and if your friend would be there the next day.

There is no joy in my mind anymore. there are the faux words, strung to sound like myself though I feel like the bread left over after a toddler has surgically removed the cheese, lettuce, tomato, and ham one by one, sucking the flavor of them all and tosing them aside. Perhaps its the medicine to steady the moods that used to sway like a ship or maybe it's that I feel like the other disciples too afraid of the sea threatening to Titanic their biblical ship to notice that Jesus is standing on fucking water. Maybe I'm just doomed to continually drown until I make like all the authors in those books I look at all around my room and just fade to obscurity and die penniless on the street. This is truly morose, but what's to be expected when one loses their job and is faced with a mountain of bills and debt collectors and loan sharks smacking metaphorical bats in gruff hands. They have lawyers for that now.

What if i were to just disappear and end up walking down a street in Amsterdam with my dreadlocks discreetly tucked into a scarf and holding a Michael Kors bag with a hamster's chubby face hanging out? No one ever expects a hamster. It feels like it's been years since I've been able to write a scenario of any sorts. I think I know how a thirty-eight year old football player feels in third quarter after they just came back from a hamstring injury. I've missed words but God is it hard to keep going. That's how I feel nowadays. It's hard to keep going. I fill my day with arbitrary tasks because taking naps just isn't fun anymore. Taking a nap on a lazy day used to feel nice and now it just makes me feel like a waste of time and space.

There used to be a time when being alive didn't feel so daunting. I wish I could go back and find the exact second when I started to feel like Atlas, being crushed under the weight of the real world and unable to escape. There feels like no out, and any out I can foresee will take years to enact because it's never just me. That's how they get you. Ensnare others who will keep you accountable so you'll never leave, never be able to fully get away. How do people survive this tribulous span of adulthood before they get the relief of becoming an elder? When will this journey become enjoyable instead of a constant, careful labryrinth of choices that will blindside you twenty-three steps down the road?