It’s time. It’s time for the resurrection. It’s time to come back out of the shadows.

I’ve been putting it off, fighting with myself for a long time about this blog. But now it’s time.

I’ll be back later tonight to work on this. There are a few things to do first. Kids to bed. Self to peace. Then, return and resurrect.

Suddenly everything has a terrible urgency about it.

Why?

Who the f**k cares. Time to make it happen.

It is a long life.

I don’t want to die.

But someday I will also be glad to reach its end.

Is it strange or sad or maladaptive to say that?

I’ve felt it many times in the past. I feel it again tonight.

— § —

I’m listening to David Bowie’s acoustic performance of Dead Man Walking from 1997.

Years of hard, confused living, up and down, alive and as good as dead. Integrity is poison, to go with all the other kinds. Hard living it has been. I’m not a rock star or a member of a biker gang, but I’d put my wear and tear against any of theirs.

How is it for the people that don’t live hard?

Do they feel as much? Do their colors seem as bright? Does the air smell as fresh to them as it does to me early on March mornings as the dew looks for places in the sky to hide?

Do they love the same? Do they hate the same?

Is there some advantage to all of this? Does the candle that burns twice as fast necessarily and really burn twice as bright? And even if it does, is that a good thing?

— § —

It is what it is. It has always been whatever it was.

There is only one lesson that can be learned in life, and even then not everyone learns it.

It is what it is.

— § —

How many people have I been? How many places? How many times have I told the truth? How many times have I lied? Are there even answers to these questions? Does it even matter if there are answers to these questions? Should I be reading C. S. Lewis? Kahlil Gibran? Can I give my kids what they need before my time is up? Can any parent?

Why does it get so dark? Does it seem darker than it used to be? Is it my fading eyesight? I know that my hearing is fading, as it did for my father once, a long time ago.

— § —

“Like a dead man walking…”

Atlantic City. I remember being in Atlantic City with a car full of geeky undergrads, climbing the fountains, creating mayhem, spending money left and right, drinking to excess in the middle of the night, far away from everything, far away from reality, far, far away from the selves that we all so badly wanted to leave behind, a universal human impulse if ever there was one.

Or is it? Is that a conceit?

So many questions. It’s folly to look for answers. You won’t get them. You can try. You can scream, kick, drink, make a scene, push everybody away, pull them close, fight, fight, fight the sky and every last one of the stars with every bone and muscle in your body. You won’t get them.

They aren’t there.

That’s the dark secret of the universe. The answers aren’t there for you. They aren’t there for anyone. That’s not what the universe is for. And you can’t know what it’s for.

And you won’t. Ever.

— § —

Tomorrow. Tomorrow is always terrifying and always inspiring and always hopeful and always depressing. Because tomorrow you will live. Or because tomorrow you will die.

The same goes for everyone.

And today… today is just tomorrow gone beyond its sell-by date, all spoilers on the table.

— § —

“The secret story is the one we’ll never know, although we’re living it from day to day, thinking we’re alive, thinking we’ve got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn’t matter.”

The hardest thing right now is just being alone. Not because I can’t be alone. I can. I have. At times in my life, I’ve even reveled in it.

But right now, I’m married. And yet I’m alone. And I just want some… Well, some company. Someone to be with. Not on a date, at an event, nothing in particular. Someone to talk to as I go out and come in from taking out the trash. Someone that will lean through in my office door and ask me where something is. Someone that is sitting on the couch as I walk by, and that walks by me as I’m getting a soda out of the fridge.

You know. Companionship.

It is so frustrating at times not to have this. I don’t want to put pressure on my wife. It’s not what we need right now. But it is hard at times not to be able to share life without having to—you know—having to share it. Because sending a text or making a phone call makes things into a thing. Now you are spending time talking about them. And in a charged relationship environment, making things into a thing is more than ought to be done, most of the time.

It makes no sense to send a text and say, “gosh, this ketchup bottle is dirty,” or “dog needs out again,” or “it’s really cold out, wear a coat,” or “I can’t find my keys—oh wait—I found them!”

So all of these things go unsaid. And it feels weird to message them or call them over. Like I’m trying too hard if I do. They don’t deserve a message. They don’t rise to that level. But these are the things life is made of. Without them, what do we share? Memories. I sometimes worry that we’re drifting apart in ways that are just as significant as the emotional drift that we experienced before.

Sometimes I feel like we’re gonna end up in “we really love each other, but from a distance, and as friends” territory. And that would be a damned shame because it doesn’t have to be that way. At least, it doesn’t on my part. I guess it does on her part. I’m trying to understand and accept that. Sometimes I do better than other times.

Right now, at this moment for me, it just seems backward to try to put a marriage back together by willfully staying apart. You don’t talk. You don’t interact. And without talking and interaction, what is there?

Ugh. Okay, this has been me venting. I guess I need to trust the process. If wife and therapist aren’t bothered by it, then maybe I shouldn’t be either. But I’ll be damned if I don’t just want some companionship sometimes.