Laryngitis

Somewhere over the last two weeks I seem to have lost my voice, metaphorically speaking.  Whatever the underlying cause, I can’t seem to kick it.  I really want to write, I just can’t bring myself to do so.  Perhaps it is the onset of depression or maybe I have become bored with the project.  Either way, I am receiving a fair bit of heat from my better half over the lack of content since our return from vacation.  It’s not that I don’t have anything to say, it’s just that I feel a recent need to keep to myself.  To be left alone.  Perhaps there has been some shock to the system that I am unaware of, or maybe self-preservation is what prompts this behavior.  These days I do feel more like a trauma counselor rather than a husband and father.  Constantly mediating disputes between the children and talking my wife away from the edge so as to maintain some familial peace and tranquility.  The effort is exhausting, and tending to everyone else’s emotional needs leaves little time to mend my own soul.  Perhaps that has been the reason for my absence.  I have spent most of my days since our return from the mountains simply going through the motions, trying not to get too involved with any one thing.  Letting myself rest, heal, recharge.  As I write this now, I realize that this is what I should have been doing all along . . . writing.

Over the past week or so, I have been plagued with semi-restful, dream filled nights.  The content of these fanciful flights seem dominated by thoughts of career and a life I once lived.  Let’s face it, retirement isn’t easy.  The transition one makes in their sixties or even seventies is trivial when compared with the aftershock left from dropping a bomb on your career in your thirties.  I think most envy my position and it is enviable indeed, but it doesn’t come without a price.  Everyone enjoys a good pat on the back once in a while, a recognition that their hard work hasn’t gone without notice and is in certain circumstances deserving of great praise and adoration.  The typical retiree has lived out 30 or 40 years worth of milestones leading to their gold watch.  I, however, called it quits early in the first quarter.  I guess I miss the recognition.  Acknowledgement that I am good at what I do for a living.  It is petty and stinks of the kind of self-love that I abhor, but if I am honest with myself I believe it may be why I open my mouth but cannot speak.

In the end, it could well be self-inflicted emotional injury caused by the guilt one feels when they wake up and find they have been blessed but are not deserving.  It is the human condition I think.  Suffering for the sake of suffering.  It is true what they say, money can’t buy happiness.  But then again, happiness can’t buy happiness either.  We look for ways to torture ourselves and pretend we have problems to mask our insecurities and hide the truth of the less fortunate.  Why do some of us have it so damned good, when others are clinging to the bottom rung of the proverbial ladder?  There is famine, illiteracy, poverty and war on every corner of the globe.  How can I complain?  And yet I do.  I bitch about this and bitch about that, trying to keep myself from feeling too good.  Embarrassed by my fortunes, it is easier to turn a blind eye and rough myself up a bit so that I don’t have to face the truth.  The truth is, there are those in the world that didn’t choose a life of leisure and whose perception of a job well done is colored by their woeful unemployment.  A pat on the back doesn’t mean shit if you can’t pay the rent.  They didn’t choose this life.  They don’t get to feel sorry for themselves because they don’t get a “good job” at the end of the day.  Instead they end their day dreaming . . . no, praying for any job at all.

And just like that, I utter my first raspy words after a long silent illness.  Better for the fever and stronger from the cough.  It is time to recognize my blessings without the guilt and do something for those that are truly less fortunate.  I know not what that will be, but I know that I must find it.  Like the smallest crack in the largest damn, a breakthrough will soon be made and many upcoming post will come flowing forth.  Stay tuned.  R.