Insomniblog

I can't sleep. A million thoughts float through my head while I lay in bed.
After an hour of one thought branching off to another thought and another, I gave up.

Earlier this afternoon I was waiting for the World Cup final to begin so I was flipping through the channels. I found myself stopping on a movie that I didn't recognize but for some reason, I stayed there for a moment.
Gabriel Byrne and Tim Roth were in a bar and Byrne said something like, "If you were going to do something with your life, don't you think you would have done it by now?"
Tim Roth didn't have an answer. We both just stared at Gabriel Byrne, exploring the thought.
At that moment, the statement was too huge and scary for me so I kept on punching buttons on the remote.

His sentence came back to me as I laid in bed, tossing and turning.
"If you were goign to do something with your life, don't you think you would have done it by now....DE???" I felt like that was directed at me.

I keep thinking I have time. I tell myself that people have had kids in their 40s or written their first novel at 50 or traveled the world for the first time when they were 80. Right?
But deep down, I think I'm running out of precious time.

I have a million things I want to do but I don't know where to start and in all honesty, I have about a million other things tying me down.
No, I'm not married nor do I have children but I have so many responsibilities. I feel so burdened by things in my life that it's starting not to feel like my life at all.
Most of the burdens I can't even name because once I put a name to them, I feel like they might take over and smother me. If I make them real to the rest of the world, I might start resenting them more than I already do.

What if I wake up one morning and I'm old and still stuck in the same place?
What if I stood still while life raced by?
What if, while I was sitting here waiting for life to begin, it started without me?
Would I be one of those sad, bitter, pinched-faced bitches who yell at small children and have a bunch of cats, angry about missing out on the good things in life?

I'm torn between my need to do the right thing by my responsibilities and my fear that said responsibilities will take over my life until it is unrecognizable and impossible to retrieve or rebuild.

I don't say any of this to mean I am unhappy. I just worry about the future sometimes.

I'm afraid, mostly, of not having one.

Posted by De at July 10, 2006 01:26 AM | TrackBack