Brain Drain

I’m tired of life.

Life is tired of me.

I’m sick and tired.

I just want to be happy.

I just want to feel alive.

I just want to be pretty.

Why do I have to be like this?

What is wrong with me?

I need an adventure.

I need rest.

I need heated passion.

I need to be alone.

Thank goodness it’s almost time to go to sleep.

I don’t want to go to sleep tonight, because then it will be morning.

I’m exhausted.

I’m fat.

I’m bored.

I need…

I need…

Something.

What a cliché I am.  What an awful waste of human life.  I sit in my bed for the umpteenth time over the past year with a headache which is probably caused by the terrible food I eat and my lack of real, regular exercise.  Not to mention my lack of sleep.  And not because I can’t sleep, no; because I don’t want to.  I don’t want to sleep, no matter how exhausted I am.  I want the day to be over before it has begun.  I’m lonely.  I fantasize about being really, truly alone.  I eat because it feels good, because I hate myself, because there’s not a thing more exciting going on in my life than what I’m putting in my stomach.  I want life to slow down.  I want my days to speed up.  I need time.  I want to disappear…  I want to disappear.

How did I get here anyway?  How did I get to this place of Nothingness.  Not that my life has every truly been a thing of Somethingness.  I’ve always felt I was on the precipice of some unspecified thing truly spectacular.  If I could just get over the next hurtle, just lose a few pounds, just go to school, just earn more money, just get the right wardrobe, just take a vacation, just start practicing yoga.  Those things never happen.  That precipice always turns out to be just another stupid, empty field.  A field of Nothingness.  It’s partly self-inflicted- I know this.  I choose to stay out of shape.  I choose to be lazier than I should be.  I choose to let the laundry turn into a mountain, a fortress of solitude that I hide behind while I watch some more TV.  I choose to let my kids entertain themselves while I try desperately to check out of living without the advantage of drugs or booze or suicide.  I’ve tried medications… they’re garbage.  I might as well be taking a baby aspirin for all their worth to me.  Something inside me is broken.  Something inside me is missing.  There’s a wall I can’t reach past, a gap I can’t close, a Nothingness that I cannot fill.  I either feel everything or nothing, there is no in-between.  So it’s easier to choose Nothing.  Until I realize that there’s Nothing inside of Nothing.  Nothing is empty, Nothing is hollow.  Nothing doesn’t have anything to offer.  I need Something.  Something to fill the Nothing.  Something to make the Nothing feel like it never existed. 

I’ve tried to find Somethings before.  They often work, filling up the empty spaces quite nicely for a very short amount of time.  Then I lose them.  They fly away.  I drop them along the path when I see a big, fat, shiny Nothing sitting by the side of the road just begging to be filled.  And I think, “I can fill that Nothing.  I’ll fill it with me!  Let me climb inside of it, it looks so cozy in there”.  But the problem with Nothings is they cannot be filled so instead they start to fill me until I’m like a Russian doll who has lost its innards.  I’m a shell.  A shell filled with Nothing.

And I look out from my cave of Nothings at all the Somethings and I long to ingest them, to fill myself up until I’m bursting at the seams.  I know that happiness lies in a lot of those Somethings.  I just know it.  But there are a lot of Somethings out there and I become filled with worry that I’ll choose the wrong ones, or that if I fill myself with Somethings that I’ll never have time for a little bit of Nothing.  And Nothing is familiar, Nothing is comfortable.  Sometimes I need Nothing.  So I think, “Tomorrow, when I’m truly sick of this Nothingess I’ll get out and start a Something.  Tomorrow it will be easier.  Tomorrow I’ll be a different person”.  I’ll go to sleep with visions of Somethings dancing in my head only to wake up and realize that Tomorrow turned into Today and it looks so much different as Today than it did when it was Tomorrow. Now it looks just like Yesterday did.  I have no more power over Today than I did over Yesterday.  I have plenty of power over Tomorrow, though.  Tomorrow is mine for the taking.  I’ll take it Tomorrow.  I’ll start Something… Tomorrow.  Deep down I know that Today is just Tomorrow without it’s make-up on, that Tomorrow was the dream and Today is the reality, but a part of me continues to delude myself into thinking maybe Tomorrow will really be Tomorrow… maybe Tomorrow will be the one.

Nothingness can really trick your mind into seeing things that aren’t there.  Like when I’m in the middle of Something and I think, “I could really go for lying in my bed watching a movie right now… that sounds fabulous”.  The thought of the Nothingness of disappearing into a fictitious story is so appealing that it makes the Something I’m doing seem tedious, grueling, irritating, burdensome, boring.  It can turn my Something into feeling like Nothing and turn Nothing into feeling like Something, and that’s a dangerous place to be at.  It’s like eating only honey for the rest of your life.  It tastes good, and you might be able to fill up your stomach with it if you ate enough of it.  But you would never be satisfied because you’d be starving yourself.  Your body needs more than just honey.  Honey mixed in with other foods from time to time is great and a welcome reprieve from the more salty or bitter foods out there.  But it’s not anything you can live off of.  It’s an occasional garnish, not a meal.  An accent for the palate, not the theme.  Its empty sweetness leaves you with a less-than-sweet feeling of just that… emptiness.  

I like to create a world inside my mind where I don’t exist.  Where life carries on without me.  My husband finds a wife that supports him in his dreams, that pushes him to find his Something.  My children have a mother that chases them around the yard and reads them books.  Who never yells or treats them with sarcasm.  She is beautiful and healthy and talented and patient.  My husband wraps his arms around her thin waste, kisses her on the hair, and says, “I cannot imagine my life without you”.  This woman is not me.  It’s never me.  It’s who he finds once I’m gone.  The person he was probably meant to be with in the first place before I tricked him into believing that I was right for him, or made him feel like he owed it to me to be with me for forever.  

I think of this and then I wonder, “How long do I have left on this bus ride, anyway?”  

Life suddenly seems so long, filled with infinite Tomorrows who refuse to stop turning into Todays.  I can’t handle Todays.  Todays are overflowing with obligations and rules and Somethings that feel like Nothings.  I long to breathe in the ocean air, feel the mist of the jungle on my skin, the heat of the desert sun in my hair, the chill of the cool night air mixed with the glow of a camp fire.  I long to climb mountains and swim with dolphins and walk through red, dusty canyons.  I long to meditate in the trees.  I yearn for these simple Somethings that I can empty myself into and fill back up with their entities.  I want these places to transform me into the person I feel like I can be when I’m certain I’m standing at that precipice of greatness.  I know I could be Something if I could just shake this Nothing!  

Money.  We have a love/hate relationship.  I really don’t like it; I wish I didn’t need it.  But, boy, wouldn’t it be great to not have to worry about it at all?  I think of that show where the plane crashed on a deserted island and they created a new community that was based on a system of everyone pitching in and doing their part.  There was no need for money.  Everyone had a skill to contribute.  Everyone worked in their little sphere of influence without worry that the bank would take their house away or that they would run out of gas and not be able to fill the tank until the next paycheck came in.  Sure they had anarchy and disease and people-eating monsters of gargantuan size.  Is it sad that that seems like a fair trade-off to me?  That I would take the risk of dying in the jungle with an infection over worrying how I’m going to pay for my son’s next pair of sneakers?  Maybe it’s just because I’ve never been in the jungle dying of an infection.  This is why I need to get out there and experience more.  Maybe then I’ll finally be grateful for what I have.  Maybe I’ll be grateful for the car that I don’t have the money to put gas in or the son that I can’t afford to clothe properly.  

I feel such a wretch.  An awful wretch for wanting so desperately to escape from what I have.  There are people that would do almost anything for what I have and here I am wanting to leave it all behind and start fresh.  I long to go somewhere where absolutely nobody knows me and I can be whatever I want.  Somewhere where I’ll never have to drive another car and I can walk or bike ride everywhere I go.  Where I can plant the fruits and vegetables that I need to eat and live off of only that.  Where I never hurt anybody because I never get close enough to them to disappoint them.  Where I can read books and travel and interact with others when I need to.  Where I can experience other cultures and climates and smells in the air and learn about them and grow from them.  

I’m tired of feeling trapped.  I’m tired of being stagnant.

Does everyone else feel like this?  All the time?  Does everyone else feel this restless?

My muscles ache to be used.  When I finally get out and use them they cry with relief, “Thank goodness, we’ve been waiting!”  I feel breathless and sweaty and that feeling is heady and calming.  I wish I could have that all the time.  But not because I was running up and down the basement stairs doing the laundry or pushing a heavy cart of food through a grocery store or mopping the kitchen floor.  I wish I could feel adventure and excitement!  I want something new and challenging that doesn’t involve my mother losing another memory to dementia or my child throwing another fit or my only jeans splitting in the seat when there’s no money to replace them.  These are not my ideas of adventures.  I want sun and mist and sweat and wind and ocean-spray and scraped knees. 

If I could have these things I would have no use for scrapbooks or clothes drying racks or vacuum cleaners or bookshelves or cars or pots and pans.  I would live in a tiny house with a little vegetable garden and a piano and when I wasn’t at home I would live out of a backpack.  I would never wear makeup.  My hair would have natural highlights from the sun.  My skin would glow and my muscles would be firm and lean.  I would never watch another moment of TV.  I would shower with rainwater and live off of minimal solar power.  I would not have any possessions that I couldn’t just walk away from if I needed or wanted to.  I would be free with no strings, no attachments, no chains.  Free.

Boy, do I want to be that person.  What I wouldn’t give to live that life.  I’d take my husband and children with me if they promised to live my way and never look back.  I want them with me.  If I had never had them in my life, if I have never known them, I don’t know what life would have been like.  But since I’ve had them for so long I can’t go back to how it was before them.  I don’t even know what that life was.  I want them.  I need them.  There’s not much else in my life I’m truly attached to.  I just want to change the life we live together.  I want something different… for all of us.  

Trapped.  Ensnared by this invisible force keeping me put.  Ah, how I want to break free!!  The thought brings tears to my eyes.  I was meant for a more simple time than this.  I was meant for a time before cars and electricity and gadgets.  I was meant for a time of quill and ink, of traveling by horse, of reading by candlelight.  I was not meant for the noisy generation I was brought into.  It’s exhausting.  It drains the very life out of me.  I can’t stand it.  I should probably be grateful to live in a time with antibiotics and 24 hour grocery stores and washing machines and the internet.  I guess I am, in a way, but I wish I’d never known these things.  I wish I’d never come to rely upon them.  There’s too much going on, too much to think about, look at, read, take care of.  Life goes so fast and everyone is expected to try to keep up and I don’t want to!  I want to live at my own damn pace!  I’m exhausted… heart and soul, I’m exhausted.

Does anyone else feel this way?  I can’t possibly be the only one.