to thine own self

I woke up feeling like myself this morning for the first time in . . . well, who can really say? The past month or so, at least, the dreams have been more vivid than the waking world, the memories of which are dull, grey, lifeless things. Not at all like the dreams.

If they even were dreams. I dreamt of life in a tower so high it looked down on the clouds, of gazing on the world below. A life apart, a life above. Everything in the tower gleamed white, and everything we did, we did to better ourselves. We were as powerful as we were wise, and we were so very wise.

I dreamt I marched the streets in a great crowd, my voice one of thousands, demanding progress, demanding justice. Our cause was just, our ranks innumerable. Our upraised fists would shake the very foundations of society and bring the tallest towers to the ground. We were united in purpose, bound together with ties thicker than blood. We were unstoppable.

I dreamt I lived in a great desolate canyon. There the wind sang me to sleep, the owls watched over me by night, and the heat of the sun woke me in the morning. I lived on wild locusts and honey, I knew no company but the rocks and sage. I had come in seek of answers, and found only questions--questions and the perfect serenity of contemplation.

I dreamt I trudged through an unending blizzard, colder than any cold I had ever known. I had neither destination nor purpose, except this: to stop was to die. Sometimes that was motivation enough. Sometimes I kept going only out of habit. At first the memory of warmth kept me going, but soon the cold had swallowed that, too. Warmth became an abstract concept, something for the scholars in their ivory towers to discuss.

The dreams didn't flee upon my waking, as they usually do. They lingered in my mind--or, no, more than lingered. They burned away the mists, shocked me into consciousness. I was sharp, invigorated, alive. And there was a smile on my lips as I shuffled through the dim light of the day, because now, finally, I knew something the world did not.

levity

I went out for late-night coffee and burgers with some friends for the first time in ages the other night, and there's something beautiful about the perfect nothingness that comes with just killing time in a nearly abandoned 24-hour diner. It's something you forget about most of the time: the levity of simply being.

There's something comforting about that, you know?

We walked home through the streets, mostly just taking it all in--the cool spring air, the stillness of the city, the beauty of being silent with people you love. That silence we shared was sacred, and I think we all sensed it.

By the end of the night it was just me and a girl who's been having a rough time of it lately. And we had that shared moment, that "this is the end of the night" where our eyes met, and I almost thought of breaking the silence, of trying to find something to say that could make everything okay, but that something doesn't exist.

So we stood in silence for a moment, then I smiled, gave her a thumbs up, and headed off home. It doesn't make everything better, but it's not nothing, right?

stress fracture

It took six weeks of nonstop "go" before I finally hit a wall and the cracks started showing and people started saying "are you doing all right?" instead of "how's it going?" when they saw me. A thousand little hairline fractures in the facade, a thousand more in the person that mask was supposed to protect.

Nice.

So tonight I was reading some old journal entries about the last time I burned myself out with the manic obsession to always always always be doing something no matter what it is. Never say no, take no half measures, take no prisoners. That was years ago, and the first impulse is to say "I'm a different person than I was then," but that's not true, is it? The same destructive tendencies are there, right? The same obsession over what it even means to be a person even when I'm barely keeping my head above water.

I went out for coffee and burgers at 3 am yesterday with a good friend and somewhere around the third cup, while I was listlessly picking at my french fries and listening to one of my friends tell a story about some work bullshit I just started crying. And mostly because I didn't even know why I just said "it's allergies, it's fine" and wiped my eyes and stared at my coffee and really, really hoped they weren't just pretending to ignore me.

And look, I know all I need is a good night's sleep and that burning the midnight oil isn't going to fucking help, all right? But I can't stop. I've never been able to stop. That's the thing. I would if I could. And I'm only now realizing that's always been the case.