A Litany of Days

I’ve somehow lost track of the last day I had off, but I think my body knows.

This morning I woke up and just wanted to roll right back over, and kick the hell out of my alarm clock in the process. Instead I got up and got moving, launching myself upright, into the shower, and off to another consecutive day of… whatever.

My phone chronicles it, I guess, with its apps that suit themselves to various aspects of my busy life. When it vibrates I sometimes pretend it hasn’t because I know it’s probably just one more reminder that something’s due, that someone needs a form filled out, that I’m needed to fill in for someone else at work, or that something else has just been added to my schedule.

And my body feels the strain of getting up before the break of dawn every morning because I’m not as young as I used to be. Regardless of how I see myself when I look in the mirror, my right knee knows, my left wrist knows, and my greying hair knows. My body knows the day even if my mind has stopped processing each one in turn.

To my body today isn’t just another day in a litany of days. It is instead another opportunity to celebrate the fact that I’m not too old to get things done, that I’m not a relic of a time gone by, but a thriving member of time still worth living, even if the bags under my eyes doth protest too much.

I tell myself I should get to bed sooner, but these endless days hypnotize me into believing I can keep doing it ad nauseum. As long as my body doesn’t tell my mind, it says, I should be okay… until I wake up to another morning that blends into the one just beyond its event horizon, and I realize there are too many more to count in the distance.

It will truly be odd when the string is finally broken, when I can actually turn over and go back to sleep, but I can’t think that far ahead right now. I can just keep taking it one day after day at a time.

Sam