the wait

I am just waiting, now. I'm not waiting for an unknown - initially, I'm waiting, I suppose, for more of the same.

I said for years that I didn't think I could, or should, make it to this next Monday, not feeling like I did, not being who I was, who I am, over and over again, despite a lifetime of trying to be everything else for everyone else, and failing all of them and myself. I can try, I have tried. I've had my moments. But it always comes right back to zero, right back to this place where I sit now, anger and despair, wanting to scream in the middle of the cubicle farm like a tortured pig, wanting to put my fist through the monitor and set fire to all the paper covered in bullshit case law and rules that mean nothing in and of themselves, but that bind us all.

So I'm waiting for things to get better, whether I make them so or not. And then, I'll wait for them to fall apart, because that's the way of entropy, and that's so obviously the way of me, proven relentlessly, tirelessly, tiresomely, over 40 fucking years.

I'll wait to feel that way again, and then to say those things to someone again, every time the words bitingly familiar, sounding more and more like a hollow echo, all vibrating air, gone soon.

I'll wait to run, to work hard to be better, faster, lose weight, just to see the fat kid in the mirror over and over again.

I'll talk to my parents, thinking things are better, that after four decades, they've come to know, accept, appreciate that I am not the person they wanted, and never will be. And again, I'll throw the phone and open a beer and sit in the dark, tired of fighting and denying their grip on me.

Nothing changes. People don't change. It's the way of the universe, but it's not its fault. Too much of the blame is mine, I know that. I know for a fact that I've tried more than most, changed for the better more than most, all just to be here, worn out every time I try, beaten a little more every time I fail, heartened a little less every time I succeed, less willing every time to try. So now, I just want to wait. I want to close my eyes, like I did that time, trapped under the low bridge on the river, when I realized it was wrong to struggle against the rushing water, that no matter how strong I was, nature was stronger. I closed my eyes and turned with the water, and let it take me where it would, waiting to either surface on the other side, or not.