these are the days that must happen to you
It's Sunday; the wedding's exactly a week away. It's been on my calendar a long time, and I've made a trip out of it, so I feel like I should be excited to relax, see old friends, and celebrate.
But I'm not. I feel oddly detached from it all, like it's another event on the calendar to get over with.
I can identify a number of possible reasons why I feel this way. For one, my relationship with this friend (the bride) is probably at the weakest it's been in eight years. I wrote about it briefly in December, and easiest way to put it is that I'm having a hard time accepting that I'm no longer as important to her as I used to be. When I put it like that, it sounds like a reasonable and normal thing that happens all the time in adult life. But the emotional realities of accepting it are a bit dicier.
I've also been struggling to sleep lately. I hate being up at three or four in the morning, unable to sleep but too tired to get up and do anything. Maybe the impending hearing is affecting me more than I'd like to admit or the existential void is staring back at me a little bit harder than usual, but I'm really starting to wish I can get uninterrupted shuteye back. I don't need to be getting sick with all this travel on the horizon.
It's not all been doom and gloom. Today I celebrated a friend's birthday over brunch and took care of the cutest Cockapoo1 the rest of the day. It's not like good things aren't happening to me. But I'd like to know how to reach out and grab them, rather than merely watch them pass by through a thick layer of glass like fish in an aquarium.
I've been thinking a lot about the Walt Whitman line that's the title of this poem. These are the days that must happen to you. Good days have been hard to come by for me recently, so I keep repeating those words to myself like a mantra. I'm trying not to lose sight of the hope that maybe someday one year, two years, even five years down the line, that all this suffering will be worth it, that I'll look back on these days and be grateful for the lessons they taught me. The closest song I've found that captures this feeling is this one, I hope you like it.
Crossbreed of Cocker Spaniel & Poodle.↩