I have developed a compulsion to create things, as if I am in desperate search of a missing piece to unlock a puzzle and the clock is ticking.
I have come-to, seeming mid-fugue, at a dining room table covered with paints and coffee pods, while my child belts Wish in the next room. I have a vague memory of participating in a craft fair.
I awake soaked in sweat. How did I get these penguin pajamas? My dreams are so vivid they could be premonitions. Did I accidentally drop acid before I fell asleep? It feels like there is always a full moon. I have an urge to howl.
In the morning, it hurts to have slept. In fact, everything hurts all the time, but the maladies seem uncategorizable. Is there a flesh doctor? Someone who works with air or the lack of it? Which doctor treats existential malaise?
I purchase things with non-FDA approved medicinal properties, ancient remedies for some ailment I inherited by osmosis but cannot identify. I consider hosting a cacao ceremony. I consider building a greenhouse. I consider moving to the middle of nowhere and living off the grid.
Is this mid-life? I wonder. It seems too soon, but I suppose it’s mathematically plausible. I wonder about the type of math they are teaching now and realize I may not be able to help my child with homework. Isn’t the food pyramid a sham now? What happened to the brontosaurus? Is Pluto even a planet? It feels like nothing I learned is true.
Bold intrusive thoughts pop into my head while I’m driving: Maybe I should walk dogs, or open a bakery, or learn to farm. We should join a PSA, be zero waste, raise chickens. I get really into the idea of composting before I realize how much I’m disgusted by garbage.
I am tangled in yarn but I have no recollection of purchasing it.
I want to plant things and watch them grow, then eat them, and walk by the produce in the grocery store while giving an internal finger to the man, thinking, I don’t need your stinkin’ kale; I grow my own.
The cognitive dissonance I feel between myself and the world is a chasm filled with sawdust. At the grocery store, I wonder, do I work here? I should ask for a raise. I see people with midriffs and exposed ankles in the winter and wonder, What is the point of that? and Aren’t you cold? The state of the world is a topic I cannot assail without exploding or imploding. I recently read that numbness is not a lack of but an excess.
I am constantly dehydrated, but I never remember to drink water until nighttime, as if it’s one on a long list of things I will never achieve and have to cram in before bed. I get up to pee in the middle of the night and inexplicably check outside, for what, I don’t know.
I’m cold all the time. Except when I am so hot I no longer want to inhabit my body. In the summer, I carry a $10 handheld device that mists me whenever skin feels like a nuisance. I prefer to be naked, but sometimes I’d prefer to be without the constriction of dermis as well. I hate everything in my closet.
Baristas are sometimes the only adults I talk to all day. They are tattooed and kind and have piercings in seemingly uncomfortable places. They tell me about edible flowers and how they like to smoke watching the alley come to life. I want to give them gifts for making me feel like a person.
My feed is pants that are unnaturally stretchy and mushroom coffee alternatives that promise to revive qualities I don’t remember losing — like focus and energy and purpose.
I still sometimes have nightmares about missing class.
I still sometimes feel l’appel du vide.
I still sometimes doubt that I exist.
This piece was originally published in Human Parts.
Spot on! I’m past mid-life (unless I live to be a centenarian), but/and could so relate to everything you wrote. “I purchase things with non-FDA approved medicinal properties, ancient remedies for some ailment I inherited by osmosis but cannot identify” —yes! to that and growing kale and being zero waste and having paint all over me.
I'm with you 100%, Kate. What happened to the brontosaurus? "They" didn't cancel it like they did to poor, unassuming Pluto, did they? Is brontosaurus now a "dwarf dinosaur"?.... You know what? Don't tell me. With everything I ever knew to be true disappearing, let me have this one thing. This is midlife and I'd like to leave this world still holding some things sacred. Sigh...