All I See is the Sea




There are days where I never feel truly awake. I know there is a limitlessness to me, to what I can do, but then, conversely, there is the ultimate limitation that are the constraining bookends to a life. Birth. Then death. And we are, I am, everything between. But yet, even with this knowledge, some days, still, I cannot seem to ever truly wake up.

I wonder if this is only my battle. If others share this same struggle. When waking up, being alive throughout the day to day, is a battle, with no greater enemy than that of tiredness. I am not old. I still have a lot left to do. To both see and accomplish. And yet, again, I am just inexcusably tired.

Rest. Is there such a thing as enough rest? I always whisper to myself, 'If you could just rest for a certain healthy period of time, you could be better. Be revitalized. Be ready. Be no longer tired.' But that prescription, it never seems like the right time. There is never enough time for rest. There is never the right time to rest. And as the dizzying specter of the final bookend looms in an unknowable closeness, where is there time to truly rest.

Maybe if I were to change my diet. Somehow up my serotonin or dopamine levels. If I were to adjust my sleeping habits and acknowledge the fact that I am not as young as I once was. If I could just note the season around me, cold with winter shortened days, I could agree with myself without pressure that more hibernation is necessary and that an exaggerated feeling of tiredness is actually normal. But I have no rubric for normal. I never have. And any sort of neurotic staggering consultation as to what is normal, well, again, just leaves me all-the-more tired.

I do not like to admit it. It's truly not an easy admission. In the City that never sleeps, it seems vulgar to speak of such things. An almost slap in the face of the millions who go about, punching through life, tired or awake, battling to uphold this city's enigmatic reputation and identity. But I myself am punching, many a day, if not everyday, and still, I feel so tired.

I am stranded on this island. An island of fatigue and exhaustion where all around me sits the sea, deep and far. I do not have the strength to swim. I cannot see any possible resolution or vehicle for hope. All I see is the sea where the end is the end and everything between is just that tireless swim that stands between.

My eyes are heavy. My bones are tired. And there is a siren of sleep calling, and I want to scream at her and say 'enough is enough.' And I want to win and be proud of doing so. But that is a dream. A hopeful ghost of what will never be. And in life, dreams are best made while asleep, and maybe that's the greatest torment of it all.

So then, tired or not, on an island or in the sea, alone or among the congregation, the only thing I can keep on doing, helpless but alive, is just keep on living. So that is my promise to make and to keep, and with no one else as its constituent, I promise, I strive, through the insufferable spin of life, I will fight with all I have left to give and do my best to just keep on living.



-Remoy




Remoy Philip