Falling stars

Wikipedia photo credit: User:LCGS Russ

I miss normal. The comfort of routine, the pattern that guides my life. It broke last week for reasons that I discussed in my last post.


I went back to work yesterday, looking for normal. I did not find it. My legs complained on my ride to work. Whined as if they hadn’t performed that task several days a week for years. On the ride, I determined that I would not bring any pain with me. That work would be a detached place where I solved technical problems and did not speak of pain or feelings.


I failed in my resolve. Hurt followed me like a cloud, fell on my desk like a light mist. I passed it to my coworkers as they asked what happened. Watched it soak them like rain. It was a cold hurt, lacking the fire of last week. But it was hurt nonetheless.


I stared at my work, flipped through the papers that contained my problems to solve. But the words did not work right. They blurred and smeared as I looked at them, became illegible. It felt like trying to read in a dream, where letters dance and defy the ink the holds them.


Normal was nowhere to be found.


I escaped for lunch. Took my bike, convinced a friend to bring his. We pedaled in the sun along familiar roads. Over the bridge. Along the water. Up Trenton, that slow and steady drag of a hill. I meditated on the sound of my wheels as they whispered up the road.


We turned onto Alder. It is a straight, steep descent with a sharp uphill at the end. We dropped like rocks, like arrows shot downward. The wind roared, tugged at my clothes, pressed on my chest, fought me. It felt good, like freedom, like flying, like how children image battle will be.


We soft pedaled back to work. Crawling along the water, watching the sun and waves dance. I dreaded returning to my desk, but my bike took me there anyway.


I felt raw, easily wounded. I fought the urge to talk, choked on words that I knew would be unnecessarily harsh. I could not find the right words, words that fit the situation. It’s strange feeling numb and angry at the same time.


I decided that I wasn’t actually looking for normal, for what ought to be. I was actually looking for what used to be. “What ought to be” and “what used to be” and “what is” are not the same. Are incapable of being reconciled.  I created for myself the lie that returning to work would somehow return the world to how I was used to, realign the axis of the earth, reset the stars in the sky. In retrospect, that was childishly optimistic.


As I write this, the world spins off axis, the stars fall from the sky, the foundations of the earth shift and slide. The vast puzzle of the cosmos realigns ever so slightly, and the realignment is deafening me.


I miss normal. I miss what was.

 

I wonder what will be.