Shaking Off

Sometimes I'm scared.

Sometimes I keep myself awake because the fear of i'll never find love, be loved, be loving echoes louder when I shut down, close my eyes, try to slumber.

Gotta quiet that.

I can spend an entire evening bouncing from one website to the next: a friend's photos, a stranger's popsicle recipe (yum that looks good, I should make that), a self-help list on the 8 things to ask when seeking true vocation... I bounce between things, but not towards anything in particular. I'm avoiding my work.

I never bring work home - except tonight I did - and on a night like tonight that is all about avoidance, I slip into some adolescent self that can't focus and must play.

Or is it play?

I've been spilling over nostalgia lately; since I saw two friends from past lives and marveled at how much we've changed, how little we've changed, how the only change is time's fault, not our own. The nostalgia has been upon me and it causes me to feel jumpy, to feel as if my bones are knocking against skin, as if something is literally stirring in me.

What is stirring in me?

I can't focus. Work is harder when you are seeking something new. Now it takes me longer to do my work - now I bring my work home with me because it takes me longer because I have to spend as much energy trying to care about my work as I am trying to do my work.

This is not me - not ideal, not what I want. But it's who I am right now.

Scattered, unsure. Hopeful to hopeless in a snap. Distracted and distracting. Quiet screaming. An oxymoron on purpose?

I'm on oxymoron on purpose. I want love and I fear it. I want new but fear it. I want change but can't find it. I wonder why it's so hard to put myself out there. I didn't think I was a shy person, but I am learning I'm more introverted than I previously thought. I wonder why when I'm finally trying to put myself out there, I'm not getting clear signs that it is worth it. Is this just a fancy way of admitting I no longer know how to flirt?

I do know how to embrace insomnia though.

Something is knocking at me. It's keeping me awake. I can't pinpoint the problem, but I sense it is a deep and endless yearning. Or, perhaps, what some people call loneliness.