Tell-tale
My pulse and pressure have been high lately. I can’t really figure it out. Physically everything is the same. Better really as my gym routine is strong and I’ve been maintaining if not improving. But something is off.
What is this that’s holding my body hostage from the corner of my mind? I know something is there as I feel its tendrils reaching out and gnawing at me. Leaking out like a drip from a faucet or a crack in a seal.
Name yourself. Tell me what you want so I can fix it. Stop showing me the clock at 2am as though I ever wanted that. I had plans for the morning, responsibilities beyond draining a coffee pot just to feel above the fog. Intent to be productive and not slovenly in a sober hangover.
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I hate this uncertainty that is entirely self created and self sustained. Get over it. Move on. Man up. Stop feeling. Heal already. As if short quips and demands of myself will be the turning point. As if self will were ever something that solved my problems and my pain.
Do I see a doctor for this? I don’t typically feel the beating of my heart in this way unless I know why. A long run. A heavy weight set. Antlers through the scope. The call for prayer from under my Kevlar. Blue eyes looking into mine. But I lie here staring at my own eyelids knowing there is a something and not what to name it.
It’s probably her. I can tell myself it’s not but I know she’s not gone. Not to me. Not to the engine in my ribs driving this rhythm in the night that won’t let me rest. Not to the reminders through the day that the way I look at the world has changed since our meeting and cannot return. Where there was a time before and now a time after.
I didn’t want this, wasn’t looking for this. tried to prevent it. Building walls and calling them boundaries. Breaking it off when I could feel them getting closer than I liked. Keeping my running shoes on to escape when it has served all I had needed at the time. But this. This was unexpected, unforeseen, unbelievable. Undoing my sleep.
The bass in my chest and temples and vibrating my body awake continues. I complain and go on about it appearing as though it’s against my desires. But this beating, this thumping, it ensures I am, in fact, alive. I have this heart to feel. I have this heart to have felt. And it knocks steadily, not as a watch wrapped in cotton. As an announcement aimed at its owner. I am here, and I will continue to feel despite it all.
