Mild Thoughts

Every night.

Here we are again, like clockwork, the eventual ebb and flow of the day. Clock strikes twelve and the thoughts start to flood in.

Remind myself I’m a loser. Check.

I fight my eyelids, knowing the cycle will only start again if they close. Stay woke. To sleep is to forget, for I will wake and give into my desires, my addictions will imprison my choices. At least, until the twelve bells ring again.

The path of least resistance will continue to win, right up until the inevitable grip of the whirlpool that is sleep starts to tug. No one really appreciates freedom–or potential, until it’s being ripped away from you. And then, turmoil.

The next thing I know, the alarm, “Ripples”, is blaring in my ear–how fitting for the metaphor. I groan and cover my head. Another day gone and another day to waste. Time for coffee, I guess.

Nothing changes.

And even if it does–even if I grow in some way, even if I swim against the current and make it to the other shore; when I get there and look back, the boy standing on the other bank looks nothing like me now.. so young and naive and unaccomplished, my how I miss being him some days…

But even now, as a man, so different from him, I still find myself in the same headspace as him every night. Though the skin ages, and relationships wax and wane, and my emotional resolve hardens, and my understanding broadens, and my accomplishments and accolades turn from an empty wall to a trophy case of personal projects and little thank you notes. Still, when it comes to my own self image, nothing changes.

It feels like I will always find myself back here again; midnight, perpetually disappointed.. in me.