24 Hours

Have you ever wanted to walk out of your life? Just sink into your follies like pajamas, never leaving your bed again? Throw the pillow over your face. Let it do its worst? Hide under the feathery folds of fabric. Stick yourself in between the sheets and the comforter, comforted, if only for a moment?

First World problems, I know.

*

Sometimes I feel myself collapsing under the weight of all the palpable unknowing, the wondering, the inescapable feelings of failure.

I am "the faller."

Failure is looming.

Failure is blooming.

Failure comes to find me, boom - boom - booming.

Failure, why you dooming me?

Failure is already here. Like the future.

Failure, I am become you.

*

I'm a disappointment. I know.

I know better than anyone.

It didn't go well. Whatever it was. A phone call. A visit. A glance. A formerly friendly friendship. A job. The job. And with it, that sense of self that came with it...

Now that sense of self is slipping, sinking, sunk.

That something that kept me going, I see it suddenly lost. Suddenly unattainable, like a ghost ship or a whisper or a promise broken.

Floating away, just beyond my grasp.

*

Have you ever been given everything you ever wanted only to have it taken away -- even before you could learn to love it properly?

I have. Earlier today.

*

Did you count your chickens before they hatched?

Did you make a scramble of it?

I just did.

And now I have to live with it.

I don't even know what I did wrong.

*

I will, you know. Live with it.

But right now, at this moment, living with it feels impossible.

*

In times like these I allow myself 24 hours to wallow in my unshakeable misery. To feel its full weight. To let it settle in around me, sucking me under, deep below, into the ebb and flow of the great unknowing.

Sometimes I see blank walls and hate them for their fortitude. The walls are probably looking back at me, thinking, "Run, you fool!"

Wise walls.

*

Sometimes I hold my breath longer than I should, not because I don't like breathing, but because my breath is the only thing that feels real when the world around me comes crashing down. I don't want to lose it, too.

That's when I start the countdown.

*

I give myself time to soak up all the pain. But only for 24 hours. Then I put a stop to it and I get on with my life. Every bad thing is just a visitor.

If a bad thing wanders in through my door, I invite it leave by the nearest exit. I open the windows and find my way back, under the covers, if only for a brief reprieve.

When the time is up, when 24 hours has elapsed, I pick myself up and dust myself off, and I begin anew.

Trying harder, better, more, something, anything else is what I can do.

I can only do better -- be better -- if I try again. Failure only lasts if I let it. If I give in.

So I try again.

After the 24 hours.

*

But for now, in the deeply dark hollowness of the time being, at this precise moment and for the next 24 hours, I'm going to allow myself to feel it -- all of it.

The confusion.

The loss.

The disappointment.

The pain.

The sorrow.

The knowing that it had to be me. My fault. Something I did.

It's always me.

*

I'm exhausted.

Think I'll go to bed now.

My pajamas have me written all over them.

***

Copyright © 03/05/2024 by Christy Munson. All rights reserved.