driving back to work from lunch today, i drifted off into a reverie of the past. there was a time when everything was vivid, when every passing moment was intensely experienced. i think that's what everyone seeks in high school reunions or just reunions with old friends. it's what i seek when i recall the girl i once was. that girl had considerably more pain than i have to deal with on a daily basis. she wasn't sure she would make it to 50. she certainly wasn't sure whether she wished to.
these days, though i try to remain present in the moment, i frequently drift off into an anesthetized routine. i'm a little numb to it, so i try to reach back and rouse emotion or, at the very least, to break free momentarily from the drudgery of my life. every day it's the same. wake up, think about how sore i am from working out. try to summon some interest in what i'm going to wear to work. lately i just put on whatever's easiest. i shower, wake my husband up with coffee in bed and finish getting dressed. i take care of the dogs, then i drive the same streets to the same job i've had for at least 12 years now, but who's counting? i hang around work, go to lunch, come home at the end of the day. i have dinner with my husband, go home, work out and do a little reading. sometimes i meditate. then bedtime and i get up the next day to do it all over again. it's so unbearably tedious.
my therapist would probably say that one of the reasons i have such a numbed response to my life is because there are so many emotions i keep at bay. at the heart of it all is an attempt to hold at arm's length the recognition that i simply haven't been very important to anyone in life. in all of the relationships i've ever had, i immediately move to the bottom of the list of priorities. i don't understand why that's so. when parents can find so many other things to care about than their child, maybe one simply gets accustomed to this profound aloneness. i don't think i'm capable of confronting that black hole hidden at the very center of my being. whenever i catch glimpses of it, the pain is unbearable. it's so much easier to just go through the day like every other day. the sameness of my days may even be just a little heartening. i'm no longer living in a chaotic environment where unanticipated dangers loom behind every passing second. anesthesia is thus somehow comforting.
nonetheless, i miss the girl who was so vibrantly present even to that terror and pain. i think she just got very tired. maybe that's just what middle age feels like to everyone. monotony. comforting in its predictability, but ultimately, maybe deadly to all feeling. we are unimpressed, thank you very much. we've seen the blue sky and the sunset a thousand times before. we've met new people and found them to be, at best, predictable and, at worst, just the same old demands in new packages. we've married our heart's desires and found them to be surly and unshaven in the morning. romance is an old wive's tale. it's just all the same, every last second.
here's the quote of the day:
"There's no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow." ~ Edith Wharton
america held hostage day 1829
bushism of the day:
"They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some kind of federal program."wesite of the day: National Institute for Discovery Sciencehttp://www.nidsci.org/index2.htmlYou gotta love this shit.
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