Exorcising the demons
Jul. 20th, 2003 03:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tugrikIt's 12:47am. I can't sleep. I've just spent the last four hours as a Liberator pilot, helping my squad drive the Terran Repblic out of Ishundar... having stopped only because I simply don't want to play any more video games. I'm in the computer-generated world instead of doing anything productive with my evening because I need an escape. When the game stops it's like I'm being crushed slowly from above. Everything comes crashing down on my emotions, and I remember why I started up the computer in the first place. I'm keeping the brain busy to keep it from angsting.
There's a million things on my mind. Work's ownership of my life and how it's affected my health over the last year are the two topics highest on the list. There's a horde of others-- life, death, friends, goals, failures. I may normally be a calm and mellow guy but there's been enough going on in my life to wake me up with nightmares, ripping apart my usual calm-home of lucid dreams. Sleep is usually my safe haven. That haven is gone, though, and has been for months now. It's like I've lost the ability to stop and simply rest my mind.
Sometimes order brings calmness. Some clean. Some organize. Me? I plodded out to the garage, opened up the bag of supplies I'd bought from SJBMW just before they closed last evening and gave the bike a well deserved oil change. Taking care of my infrastructure helps me focus; helps me chill. Tools, such as my vehicles, make my life all the better. It's worth my time to see them cared for.
Instead of squidding it around the block a few times to let things settle in, I find myself with the riding armor on and at the gas station checking tires and topping off the tank. How'd that happen? Soon enough I'm slow-riding through Uvas canyon, PIAA's splayed wide to help me find Bambi before Bambi finds my engine guards. The moon winks and peeks at me through tiny holes in the clouds covering the sky tonight.
...wait. Was that a raindrop?
Rain? Midsummer rain on a warm-aired July night? Soft, bathwater warm, calming rain coming through the gap where my visor isn't quite closed?
It is. This never happens. Not here in the Bay. Life here, all last 10 years of it, has robbed me of the glories of warm rain and summer squall. It simply doesn't happen. A flicker of lightning in the distance shows a storm that wishes upon itself to exist, but can't quite manage it. Hope in electric form. Memories of a life past.
The helmet is off; the bike's found its way to the lazy lean of its sidestand. I'm in a field of quiet grass a few hundred feet off the roadbed, the sound of gentle rain making the world around me lush with awareness. Again, how did I get here? I'm supposed to be in my little suburban box, still stuffy with daytime-heated air, computers whirring their fans and appliances droning out their 60hz tune. It's 2:30 in the morning. I'm supposed to be fidgeting in bed, unable to sleep from acid reflux gone wrong and bodyweight-induced apnea. How am I here? Why am I here?
The raindrops, though few and short-lived in their arrival, spatter as they hit my face. I can feel the demons of my daily life rise from me, driven out by the rain's cool touch. Part of me tries everything it can to hold on to them, as if the depression and anxiety those demons cause are all I have left in this world... but their forms were but wisps of steam, un-catchable. Their worries flow past my grasping hands and into the clear night sky. Then it comes to me: no matter what I do -- it's all going to be OK. That's just the way the world is, and there's nothing to be done but accept it.
I would have thought I was dreaming instead of out here in the Real... but I could hear the soft tic tic tic of the cooling boxer engine releasing its own demons of heat, making tiny hisses of steam each time an unfortunate raindrop hit the pipes. The thought came to me that I had a 99% chance of being on private property and it wouldn't go over too well to just sleep there. I was now feeling tired -- a good tired. Time to go home.
Back in the house now, and the odometer's only seen 28 miles. Sure, it's been over two hours, but I had some thinking to do. Now that I've jotted it down for me to remember and you all to read, it's time to sleep.
There's a million things on my mind. Work's ownership of my life and how it's affected my health over the last year are the two topics highest on the list. There's a horde of others-- life, death, friends, goals, failures. I may normally be a calm and mellow guy but there's been enough going on in my life to wake me up with nightmares, ripping apart my usual calm-home of lucid dreams. Sleep is usually my safe haven. That haven is gone, though, and has been for months now. It's like I've lost the ability to stop and simply rest my mind.
Sometimes order brings calmness. Some clean. Some organize. Me? I plodded out to the garage, opened up the bag of supplies I'd bought from SJBMW just before they closed last evening and gave the bike a well deserved oil change. Taking care of my infrastructure helps me focus; helps me chill. Tools, such as my vehicles, make my life all the better. It's worth my time to see them cared for.
Instead of squidding it around the block a few times to let things settle in, I find myself with the riding armor on and at the gas station checking tires and topping off the tank. How'd that happen? Soon enough I'm slow-riding through Uvas canyon, PIAA's splayed wide to help me find Bambi before Bambi finds my engine guards. The moon winks and peeks at me through tiny holes in the clouds covering the sky tonight.
...wait. Was that a raindrop?
Rain? Midsummer rain on a warm-aired July night? Soft, bathwater warm, calming rain coming through the gap where my visor isn't quite closed?
It is. This never happens. Not here in the Bay. Life here, all last 10 years of it, has robbed me of the glories of warm rain and summer squall. It simply doesn't happen. A flicker of lightning in the distance shows a storm that wishes upon itself to exist, but can't quite manage it. Hope in electric form. Memories of a life past.
The helmet is off; the bike's found its way to the lazy lean of its sidestand. I'm in a field of quiet grass a few hundred feet off the roadbed, the sound of gentle rain making the world around me lush with awareness. Again, how did I get here? I'm supposed to be in my little suburban box, still stuffy with daytime-heated air, computers whirring their fans and appliances droning out their 60hz tune. It's 2:30 in the morning. I'm supposed to be fidgeting in bed, unable to sleep from acid reflux gone wrong and bodyweight-induced apnea. How am I here? Why am I here?
The raindrops, though few and short-lived in their arrival, spatter as they hit my face. I can feel the demons of my daily life rise from me, driven out by the rain's cool touch. Part of me tries everything it can to hold on to them, as if the depression and anxiety those demons cause are all I have left in this world... but their forms were but wisps of steam, un-catchable. Their worries flow past my grasping hands and into the clear night sky. Then it comes to me: no matter what I do -- it's all going to be OK. That's just the way the world is, and there's nothing to be done but accept it.
I would have thought I was dreaming instead of out here in the Real... but I could hear the soft tic tic tic of the cooling boxer engine releasing its own demons of heat, making tiny hisses of steam each time an unfortunate raindrop hit the pipes. The thought came to me that I had a 99% chance of being on private property and it wouldn't go over too well to just sleep there. I was now feeling tired -- a good tired. Time to go home.
Back in the house now, and the odometer's only seen 28 miles. Sure, it's been over two hours, but I had some thinking to do. Now that I've jotted it down for me to remember and you all to read, it's time to sleep.
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no subject
Date: 2003-07-20 04:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-20 11:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-20 11:39 am (UTC)I also miss the rain, the summer thunderstorms of Florida...
no subject
Date: 2003-07-20 03:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-20 04:37 pm (UTC)But I don't think you should be mollified by a few raindrops. I think you should get in touch with your inner Viking. You need to go into that office, pull a battle axe off your back, and AAAGGGGGH! Diamond Dave's head goes rolling. Who doesn't want that?