Tag: alone

Tuesday morning

7:03am Tuesday morning. No matter where I go or what I do I nothing is different because the beast inside my chest remains. In changes it’s name, it’s power source but the overwhelming anxiety stays in me forever. I change circumstances but I don’t change the eternal internal aggression eating away in my sternum. That is life and will be until I die

Feeling

5:42am I don’t feel much any more. My emotions are too scarred from years of anxious thought. What is the point of recounting the past? I am not who I once was. I will never will be that version of me again. A fleeting glimpse of the sun bursting through fluffy clouds above the mountains. Being intimate with the woman I love. Long drives through parts of northern Utah only I know. For so long I held on to those thoughts. Cherished them. Now they only remind me that I will disappear from the earth. I will die just as will everything I love.

Thursday morning

5:29am I got up this morning feeling tired. I put on my clothes and took a walk. As I walked under dim streetlights I asked a question; What would I think if I were dropped into this life with no pretext? I am a hospice director in Phoenix with my family living in California. Would I be surprised by the job? Disappointed I am not with my family? I imagine myself creative. A writer, actor, musician. why do I not do that as my “job?” I have a wife and a daughter. Aren’t I lonely being apart from them?

Different person

3:40pm. In the grocery store parking lot. I am bored and killing time until 5pm. I bought some lunch items for next week and a six pack of beer. I am ready for the weekend. I realize I am a different person in my mind. In my head I am suave. I communicate with confidence. in real life I am quiet. Low energy. People drain me. I want to be alone.

Poet

5:48am Friday. This morning on my walk I realized who I am. I am a poet. Not in a romantic sense. Or a professional. Or even good at the craft. Rather if I was left alone, if I had to fill my time, I would sit silently, think and write. That is my default setting. I always knew that. Yet it was difficult to declare. I thought in order to say that I needed to be talented. I needed adoration. I needed to earn money. Today on my walk I accepted I can be who I am.

Surreal

3:32pm the family being gone and back in Orange County makes today feel surreal. Like time opened up and offered a different reality. I had been here alone for months.When they were here it was a new experience. The apartment felt more comfortable, work felt less consuming. Now they have left. I washed the sheets and cleaned the counters. everything is back to how it was before they came.

Change

7:02pm I know many people that changed because of the pandemic, lockdown. They don’t see the point of working long hours, going to the office. I am the opposite. I used to value making my own schedule. My freedom at work. My alone time when I wasn’t working. A year ago I couldn’t envision spending ten hours a day in an office. Now I like it. I changed but in true me fashion I changed the opposite of everyone else.