January 6, 2009

• Lost Days

  There are days when you are just on. You just wake up that way. You’re motivated. You’re energized. Your mind is sharp. Your reflexes at the ready.  On these days, you know you can do absolutely anything.

  On these days you get a lot done. Lots of stuff happens to you. Amazing things. Terrible things. But it’s all cool. For on these days you are ready. The world changes. Life moves on in a tumult of chaotic events and you are at the center of it all cool and calm and collected and in control. Weathering the storm, changing the world, creating your life. Full days. Real days. Complete days.

  And then there are the other days… the Lost Days.

  Have you ever experienced them? Those days when you know you woke up at some point but you never really felt like you were awake at all. Days when you didn’t have any energy or motivation. Days where you just lay in bed unsure whether you are even going to bother to get up at all.

  And maybe you do. You go about your business in a daze. Maybe you watch a movie or television or read a book but it isn’t anything special and you know you won’t remember any of it in a month or maybe even a week. You eat a meal or two that are just like meals you’ve had a thousand times before.  Maybe you clean up. Do some laundry. Maybe you go to work and go about your business. But it’s just another day at work. You have conversations with people you know, online and offline, but they are in no way different than a million such conversations you’ve had in a lifetime.

  And all the while your day just feels empty. You feel like you are still asleep and maybe you half want to go BACK to sleep. Your mind drags and stumbles on as if you are forcing it to work against it’s will. Your body feels like lead. Your heart is stuck in the gutter. You feel nothing of passion or joy or glory or wonder or hatred or rage or even lust. You just feel empty. The day is just silent stillness.  It’s nothing.

  These days you look back on afterward and you sort of can’t remember if they even actually happened to you. Sometimes you look back and you feel like you lost a day. As if Saturday flowed right into Monday and Sunday was just a word somebody stuck in there to be consistent with previous weeks that had seven days.

  You know how in books and stories the writers sometimes  puts in those sentences like “and three days later” or “they traveled for a month before reaching their destination”  before picking up the story? It’s like these days was just one of those three days. It was one of that month. The days the author couldn’t be bothered with describing because they were wholly irrelevant to the rest of the story.  That’s what these days are like. An irrelevant footnote in the grand scheme of your life. Not worth mentioning.

  Do you ever experience these lost days? Fallen moments? Forgotten times? I do. All the time. Usually it’s just a day here or a day there. But sometimes it’s different. Sometimes it feels like they stretch on for days and weeks and months on end. Mind numbing horrifyingly empty days that just make you want to scream: PLEASE JUST LET SOMETHING HAPPEN TO ME!!! But it doesn’t. And you can’t do anything about it either. Even if you try to fight the monotony off, the monotony just comes back and beats you down with terrifying skill and efficiency. The days stretch on and fade and you feel like you are fading with them. You’re caught in the months or years in transition between chapters. And you just have to suffer through. Survive until the plot continues. Whenever that might be.

  They say to seize the day. They say to live every day as if it were your last. But I wonder if any of those people saying those things ever took into account the days between the adventures? The lost days where you have no choice but to standby watching time stand still.

  • 12:16 pm
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