…In the Dark, Warm, Narcotic American Night

It’s not that I’m a glutton for punishment, I tend to shrug off the heavier burdens to give all the little tiny ones more room to ride my psyche.  So as I wake up again with a dull headache from staying up too late to get up too early and snoring through most of it, a few things come to mind…

I’m in a bad place in my head.  I cannot get a grip on my health.  Morning brings the notion that today will be different, and by evening I’ve spent the day eating crappy food, convincing myself I don’t have time to make something and eat better;  been stuck behind my computer at work, convincing myself I don’t have time to try and exercise later in the day;  and not lived up to anything I should live up to, convincing myself that it’s just the way it is.  I am still my own worst enemy, and that, goddamnit, needs to be worked on.

I’ve spent a long time not wanting to be here in this little part of the world anymore, so much so that I haven’t been here in quite a while.  Always thinking of what will be, so much so that I stopped appreciating anything about being here.  Now, with the recent realization that here is where I’m going to be for a little while longer now (but not forever) it’s time to try to be here now – in body and in spirit.  Time to appreciate what I have, and not resent it for what I haven’t got yet.

It’s time to tackle those lists I mentioned several posts ago.  I started to, but then it once again fell by the wayside, as much that I start is want to do.  I sat down the other day and pulled out all these little slips of paper I’ve been jotting things down on.  Things I need to do, to remember, to buy, to sell, to clean, to organize, they go on and on… but there were close to a dozen of them.  A dozen sheets of paper, all with something different on them, all with something I know I won’t do, but if I write it down…  yeah, no more of that.

There’s more, but those are the big ones, the ones I keep coming back to every night.  All these things are connected to my not sleeping, my health, my weight.  I lay awake and let these all roll through my thoughts again and again until my head is spinning so fast that it’s a good thing I’m already lying down.

But then I look over in the half-dark of 4:30AM and see my son, now 2 1/2 years old, curled up in the arms of my wife, and he’s sleeping so soundly that he’s actually smiling a little.  My miserable outlook on life see-saws as much as my weight does but one thing has remained constant -  whenever I walk through that door this beautiful little boy comes over to me – sometimes he hugs me, sometimes he kisses me, sometimes he just takes my hand and leads me to his Matchbox cars laid out on the floor where he sits down and pats the floor next to him.  He smiles as I sit down next to him and there we stay, the only bit of peace and quiet in my head lately – laying there rolling toy cars around that used to be mine, watching Cooper being happy just because I’m with him.

“Hey, you know what?” I ask.

“Wha?” he says, too fucking adorably to be corrected.

“I love you, that’s what.”

He rolls his eyes, and starts making a beeping sound because he’s backing his little truck up now, but it’s cool.  I know he knows.  Monkey, he signs to me.  “OK,” I say, grabbing the remote, “I could use some Curious George myself.”

There’s these lines I tread.  Here’s one between finding it easy to think about being healthier and finding it impossible to actually do.  Here’s one between being a hypochondriac and not being quite so much of a hypochondriac.  Here’s one between blogging helps and blogging is only for attention seeking sadomasochists and teenage girls.  Here’s one between me being a depressive that can find nothing good in the world and me controlling that… and that’s the one I think of whenever Cooper takes my hand.  He keeps me on the right side of that line.  He always keeps me on the right side of that line.

I may not be the best person right now, but I’m trying, kid.  I am.

~ by Dan on November 19, 2009.