Ebb to Light

Ebb and flow. Sometimes it’s might favorite idiom, and sometimes it’s my least favorite combination of words in the English language. So one could say that my feelings about ebb and flow have a tendency to ebb and flow.

Teaching my oldest son how to bogey board - definitely a "flow"moment. 

I’m stuck on that thought, but not because I’m trying to be clever for a moment, or because I want someone to read this and think something specific about me. It’s stuck in my head as an escape from the feelings that are pulsating through me.

Life is unfair.

Why do we need money anyway?

If I work my ass of for my wife and kids, what sort of appreciation do I have to show for it?

Why do I volunteer to help so many unappreciative people?

And that list goes on and on. In fact I haven’t slept a full night’s sleep in recent memory. Oh sure sometimes I hit a brick wall and my eyes end up closed for what appears to be a full night. But I’m really just barely beneath the veil of sleep. I hear the breathing of my wife or the sounds of my boys through the room monitor. The sounds of the house settling or the squirrels, raccoons and skunks just outside the window, keep my mind alert just enough to prevent me from slipping into that deep sleep that I have vague memories of enjoying so much.

Life takes its tolls on us daily. On our energy and health; on our ability to keep that façade that we want the outer world to see. Most days start and end the same for me, longing and searching for some form of affection or recognition from the world for all efforts I put into it. And each attempt for searching for that affection or recognition is squashed by something else; a bill, a thought, a statement, or my obsessions.

So I ebb and flow through life. In the early mornings, as most people are still tucked into their sheets and oblivious to the happenings around them, I lay wide-awake, staring at the imperfections on my vaulted bedroom ceiling. Thoughts in those moments ebb, pulling me to darker places where I don’t want to stay long. There is no way I can really control how long I’m stuck there, I relinquished control of my feelings to others a long time ago.

And then the vice grip of darkness recedes and I can flow through my day. It feels like a flow too. I surf the waves of problems with little care, identifying where they’ll break and implementing a solution before I wipe out. I feel in control for those moments, until that twilight comes and I ebb to darkness.

But even in the darkness I am fine; and even when I am in control, I’m struggling.

Hopefully tomorrow will reveal itself as something different than the past.