possibilities, potential, and progress

It's one of those days- one of those days when you wake up disappointed in yourself and in life in general and you just wish you could get on to the next day after having slept off your fears and your sadness. Tomorrow, you know, will be a day with endless possibilities and you can look forward to feeling good, even if nothing special happens. But today, you're just blue. Maybe yesterday you didn't perform to your potential. You knew you hadn't worked hard enough. You knew you'd be nervous and things would go differently than you expected. Now you feel like things aren't working out, like you're just treading water and never getting better, even at the things for which you've been working hard. You're frustrated because you can't hear yourself, and you can't hear how other people hear you. You don't know if you've progressed enough. Your confidence is shattered and you feel sick to your stomach.

And other things sort of fell apart, too. You can't help but wonder what the hell you think you're doing, playing that one game, and you're just waiting for it to blow up in your face. You're thinking of quitting while you're ahead, so that the possibility of heartache is left out of the situation. Something's wrong with this picture, the potential for disaster is too high. Too many things are at stake. It's not a simple game of 'catch me if you can' anymore, it's a race, a competition. If you let things progress, you'll end up hurting other people as well as yourself, and maybe you'll be even more miserable about it than you are now. Before too many words are spoken, before anything hurts too much, you want it to stop. You wish you didn't have to give it so much weight, because it doesn't feel like a weighty thing, but it keeps demanding your attention. It won't go away unless you make it go away.

So Today you woke up feeling kind of sick, kind of off kilter. You'd like to have a good cry about it but it's so subtle you're not sure you can summon tears so easily. Everything irritates you. You know you could talk about it with someone instead of being cryptic here on your blog, but you're afraid of being lectured. Of having someone being wiser than you. You want commiseration, mutual misery, empathy. Someone who knows that Tomorrow you'll feel better and Today is for stewing in whatever mess is in your head. You're just trying to figure out what you'll do until then...to keep these things from being too much for you.

It's the end of summer, and reality is knocking on your door. Surprise! It's time to start being an adult again. Get up before noon, cross off things on your to-do list, make plans for school, stop shirking responsibilities. Wake up.

Wake up.