To be 35 @ 4am

it’s 4am on my 35th birthday and I am kept awake wondering who I am. 

a frantic need
a frantic need

Just go to sleep.

You’ll be fucked the rest of this busy day if you wake up now.

But I can’t.
Life is happening now.

My restlessness is awake again. 

I cannot help the preoccupation.

I think “once I can figure out wtf I am trying to figure out about myself, about life-
I can be more present in myself, in life”

knowing full well that that is bullshit. 

Every month I go to the photos and make sense of it all and then it’s gone.

Remember, forget, remember, forget.

What good does it really do to force myself back to sleep?

So I can be more awake for everyone else during the day?

I want to be awake, for me, now.

Eyes open to what swallows me by day.

In the blackness of the early morning hours it lets me get a glimpse.

But

I’m scared to glimpse.

a pit in my stomach.
The unique pain of being awake at an unnatural hour.

As if you’re not allowed to be here.
As if it’s cheating.

You can know more here.
I’m drawn and it makes me uncomfortable-
scared even.

It feels close to death.
when there are no distractions awake, what is awake?

pontificating what I am seems so futile in this non light.

Just be.

It’s enough, it’s essential. 

You’re nothing without it.

But what if I find my being in the pontificating?

Is that wrong?

Sometimes it feels right.

I have an unquenchable thirst for living and most of that living is still. 

Racing mind, pounding heart, still bones.

Reading, thinking, creating. 

a still that feels anything but.

I feel alone.
I feel alone but I think I want it that way.

I have a beautiful loving family and I feel alone.

I have beautiful loving friends and I feel alone.

I have made a life of sharing my innermost thoughts and I feel alone.

Years of speaking and writing and sharing and I feel like I’ve said nothing.

It feels like I’ve done nothing.

It feels like I’ve figured out nothing.

And yet, I wouldn’t do much different.

What the fuck does that even mean?

I think I’m trying to find the grand meaning, the sum of all my efforts, and the truth is in the effort itself.

The unavoidable being.
The inevitable being.
The unquestionable being.

My furious action- even if it looks completely still- is my version being.

“You cannot read a label from inside the bottle”

And you also cannot stop me from trying.

All of the stretching and pushing and pulling.
The lines of proof from my constant furrowed brow.
Never in vain when an instant of understanding devours me.
An instant of peace and knowing and the kind of being that vibrates.

there it is. 

This.

It’s all I’m ever looking for.

This.

at 5:15 on October 26th 2024
I am sitting in the dark with my laptop on a rocking chair drinking coffee with the brisk air coming in through the window.

I am writing what seem like a shitty poem at best, stream of consciousness at least.

my family peacefully asleep.
my dog at my feet.

and I am happy.

to be alone with my thoughts is some of the happiest i ever am.
even if i’m not satisfied with the thoughts themselves.

i am happy i gave up on sleep.

i’d rather sleepwalk through the day than sleep through the life that chose to visit me at 3:45am on my birthday.

I gave birth to my son at 5:15am and that was far too early to bring life into the world
but somehow today, 5:15am feels like the perfect time.