...where distraction is the main attraction.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Awake

My dreams are mostly the same.  I'm lost in the middle of a city.  I'm going somewhere, but I don't know the destination.  As a result, the journey seems like nonsense as I travel further along.  It's all vaguely familiar, but I've never really been here before.  It is said that every dream visual is based on something the dreamer has seen in his waking life.  But I've never seen these cities, these streets, these buildings.  Many lamp lit dark alleyways and their shaky metal fire escape ladders leading up buildings without roofs or windows.  Steep downhill avenues, unnavigable from within a car without brake pedals.  Old concrete boulevards without turns and without end.  I'm travelling through a blurry version of someone else's memories and I'm getting more and more lost as I go.  I'd be terrified if I wasn't so benumbed with exhaustion.

Awake, my life is much the same.  I have gotten more confused and frustrated, understanding my life less as time has gone on.  What I thought were endpoints were distractions, each hope emptied into another abyss.  As the destinations to this anxiety soaked journey have dissolved away, a certain blank numbness had formed.

In my dreams, I'm alone.

But awake, I am not.

March 13th marked ten years with the best person I have ever known.  Kristen is filled with more hopes and patience and focus and selfless love than I can comprehend, even after ten years.  She laughs and embraces just like the 20-year-old girl I'd met a long time ago, while becoming stronger, wiser, and more beautiful with each year.  It is humbling watching a girl become a woman right in front of me.

The love Kristen and I share has been clear and true, refreshing and bright, totally unlike anything else I have ever experienced.  With her, I have experienced moments of comfort and quiet, home and (yes) happiness I've never felt anywhere else.  Those profound swirls illuminate the shadows when we live as a team.  As a single working unit we will be magnificent in the face of any challenge.

For our team, a challenge has now appeared, tremendous, nerve-wringing, insane yet ever normal.  Something very new.  A destination, in fact.  A real destination in the flesh.  A cosmic exclamation in the form of a protostar.

I am not dreaming.  I am awake.

I am going to be a father.