Days like today drive me crazy. It was beautiful outside. The sun was shining, the air was warm, and people were out and about. Of course, I saw this from inside the house, and then later when I drove to a restaurant to pick up dinner. The drive was marginally better, because I could open up the sunroof on my car, and turn up Jefferson Starship while I drove down the street. For a few seconds, at least, I felt like I was my own person, but alas it doesn’t last. Once I picked up dinner, I was homeward bound, and since the restaurant was only a few blocks away, there wasn’t much time to savor.
Spring is here, and even with the cold days that mix in with the warmer days, my body is aware that Spring is here. There is this unsettling itchiness that I cannot but despise, and this unceasing frustration that I have to clamp down tight. Year after year I deal with these feelings, and year after year, my heart hardens just a little bit more. Eventually, these feelings will stop, and then I will do nothing but mourn what could have been, sliding into whatever lonely and ignominious death that waits me.
Right now, though, days like this drive me up the wall, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Feeling too much, or feeling nothing at all, which one am I supposed to choose? If I choose either one, I lose, if I choose both I lose, if I choose none, I lose, because a choice will establish itself one way or the other.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m an introvert, I’ve been an introvert all of my life, but loneliness will make an introvert extroverted, at least for a while, and those two merge into one unholy conflict. No wonder my doctor’s concerned about my sleep habits, and why I’m beginning to look like I’m strung out on something.
That being said, I live with people who make me want to get drunk every day, and yet somehow I manage to stay sober. That’s right kids, I’m doing all of this without any kind of assistance to take the edge off. It is pure hell.
It’s a shame, though, about beautiful days like this one has been, because for a moment, it almost seems like the world isn’t a giant shit show, crushing your heart and soul underfoot with tons and tons of excrement.
Ugh, that’s not a pretty image. I’ll close with something a bit more visually appealing, and more soothing:
“A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period —
When March is scarcely here
A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.
It waits upon the Lawn,
It shows the furthest Tree
Upon the furthest Slope you know
It almost speaks to you.
Then as Horizons step
Or Noons report away
Without the Formula of sound
It passes and we stay —
A quality of loss
Affecting our Content
As Trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a Sacrament.”
“A Light Exists in Spring” by Emily Dickinson
Until next time,
Amaris