Can’t figure out what is going on with my body and its refusal lately to work as it always has and so I ask myself “what will wear you down?”
Dip into my bag of tricks, turn on some music and prove to myself again that force of will isn’t a myth because nothing wants to work and I make things move.
Throw around the lighter weights with higher reps and push through four miles and my aches are aching but I am not pleased by any of it.
It doesn’t feel natural or normal but I can’t figure out if I am making too much of it.
“What’s in your beard?”
“Stacey.”
He scrunches up his face and I realize I am so tired I didn’t use a full sentence.
“Hummus, Stacy’s Pita chip crumbs, the bag was almost empty.”
“I am not picking you up dad.”
I laugh and rally, the legs lift us up off of the couch and I tell him we’re going to need to talk.
Got less than two days until my son turns 19 and the years unroll inside my head.
In a different life I took his pregnant mom to see Gladiator and walked out of the theater thinking if I have a son we’ll watch this together one day.
Called dad and told him he had to see it, knowing he would enjoy it as much as I did.
Got a million memories of us talking about these scenes and how close they were or weren’t to historical fact.
Push myself through some more stretching and test myself to see if maybe I am just tired figuring that might be the cause of all this.
Flip on more music, close my eyes and picture the outcome I want.
****
Dad and I are in the car doing that last drive around Dallas and I am very aware of how quickly he seems to be wearing out.
It is six weeks or so before we’ll have a new reason to say fuck you to cancer but I am aware he has lost a step so I don’t give him a hard time about sleeping.
We’ll have a conversation where I’ll want to show him this scene from a movie and discuss a particular situation but it won’t happen.
Sometimes I watch it because it makes me think of him and because there is real wisdom in there of the sort that some people don’t expect to find in such a film.
But it is there and in other movies and I appreciate it because stories help us communicate and sometimes movies such as this provide opportunities for conversations you wouldn’t otherwise have.
Two years feels like a hundred and yet I can reach out and touch it as if it was yesterday.
The voice on the telephone tells me I have a great job and I am going to be really good at it.
Music plays inside my head and I go deep into the darker corners of my mind trying to figure out if the uncertainty and mystery of the unknown are the issue.
The demons have been roaming the halls but this time it is not them hunting me but me going after them.
This time I am pricking the balloon and tearing off scabs because I have gone too far to do anything else.
It is all a gut reaction based upon a proactive move to make the changes that will provide a deeper sense of satisfaction.
I am grounded but flying into the mystery.
Some of this scares me and my inclination is to walk away because I don’t have to face those fears. Don’t have to prove anything to anyone but me.
Except that is the thing, there are a few things to be proven to myself and I won’t be able to accept not trying.
So into the mystery we go, walking the damn line while dancing in rings of fire.
Pass the Ibuprofen, I am going to need a few more because the answer to what will wear you down won’t be fear.
