So, yeah, I clearly have my issues with regards to how things in the past have (and, more relevant) have not gone. I mean, we’re talking a good eight or nine years now of what-never-was and what-cannot-be, and I really can’t think about these things without getting disordered. Er, more disordered than I already am.

It being Mother’s Day, I suppose it makes sense that my mind turns to the abstract concepts of Home and Family, and how certain people I know seem to have it all together. They’ve got it all right there. This many years out, it isn’t so much that I wish I were married to the most perfect woman in the world (I mean, we all have insane fantasies that we realize will never come true, right?) It’s more like I wish I could just be part of their family, watch their kids grow up, I don’t know, just see how that kind of life works. (Don’t you love how I start using pronouns without even once mentioning their antecedents?)

Not that I didn’t have a good childhood. Of course I’ve had my ups and downs with my parents. Even to this day, my mom can drive me insane, but I doubt this is unique to me and my mom. And me and my dad had our definitive stand-off one spring day when I was in high school. But, as is expected, things get better when you’re all grown-up (or as close to it as I’m likely to get.) But even those fights and angry words and tears and anguish never (in retrospect) caused anything permanent.

And, sure, me, my brother, and my sister always had shifting alliances against each other, trying to monopolize favor, or at least prevent someone from getting their way unilaterally, and there was physical contact at times, and even things thrown at each other, axes brandished (OK, so maybe my childhood wasn’t exactly run-of-the-mill, but it certainly wasn’t a bad one), small amounts of blood spilt. But I think we’re pretty close, as far as siblings go. I will probably regret actually writing this down (because my sister has always, always pushed the envelope when it comes to asking favors, and worse, she is going to be a lawyer fairly soon and will likely hold me to my word and consider this a binding contract or something) but I would probably do most anything for those two. (Within reason! Just remember that part, huh?)

But, I mean, my sister is the youngest in the family, and she’s fast approaching 25. I can tell you, Christmas kind of sucks without any little kids around.

At this point in time, all that’s kind of left to me is to reminisce.

And I guess, in the end, I’ve been my worst enemy in a lot of ways. I’ve spent a good part of my life wallowing in self-pity and depression, and I can’t really articulate good reasons for it. I mean, maybe I can, except I don’t like dwelling on it. I’d rather not give name to my demons at this time, if you know what I mean. In any case, the demons lurk amidst some of the tortured words in the five and a half years I’ve been writing this blog. And, even if you balance out all the shit that I’ve been through with all the things I’ve been blessed with, objectively speaking, the blessings outweight the excrement.

I spent some time digging through old photo albums of when I was a baby up until I was three years old, and it’s kind of amazing to imagine that I evolved from that small creature staring dazedly at the camera, and it’s kind of neat to think how kids don’t really know sadness. I mean, sure they cry a lot, and they can perceive the most trivial of things as the utmost tragedy, but it usually goes away after a little while. You give them a new toy, or even just point out a new thing, and they get all happy with wonder.

I don’t really know which one I miss the most: the happiness or the wonder, although maybe you really can’t have one without the other.

You get older, and you start accumulating baggage. Or layers of strata, maybe. That simple pleasure of wonder becomes more nuanced, more tinged with memories, and then memories start getting worn down with repetition. I realize that that sense that time is speeding up once you pass the age of 25 is really the fact that very little of your life is spent contemplating the unique. We get consumed in routine, day-in, day-out, and in this information-saturated world of ours, it’s probably the only way to survive without going completely insane. But we lose that sense of wonder, I think. Well, a lot of us do, at least. I suppose there are some creative spirits out there who never do. That’s probably what makes them creative.

But I guess the hopeful thing I learned by flipping through those pictures is that, once upon a time, I knew what it was to be happy. That guileless, completely free smile of a child is absolute gold.

I think that’s what I’m looking for.

I was totally enamored by my friends’ 2 month old son and their just over 2 year old daughter. Now, I’ve seen a lot of babies. A lot of babies. We’re probably talking about a few hundred at least, just counting newborns. But it’s so different when they’re not your patient. When you look at them with non-clinical eyes. No matter the fact that I’ve literally picked up, carried, swaddled, changed the diapers of maybe 300+ babies, no matter the fact that when I’m at work, I do kind of find it boring in a way, I still can’t get over how wonderful their sense of newness is.

How does that little creature turn into something as obtusely complex and maddeningly convoluted as you or me?

And their little girl is amazing. The last time I saw her, she wasn’t even walking, and now she’s walking and talking, and she can even recognize letters of the alphabet and draw faces.

And the weird thing is, I think I envy them. The sense of Home and Family they are going to have, being lucky to be the kids of my friends. Not that my parents weren’t decently good parents in their own right (although there were definitely some rough spots) but the fact of the matter is that I’m a long way out from being 2 years old, and it’s been one hell of a journey, and in a lot of parts, I really do mean one (and probably more than one, many more than one) hell of a journey.

Still, as I’ve been admonished once before, I’ve never been imprisoned, I’ve never starved, I’ve never been beaten or raped, I’ve never had to live in the street. I am probably going to be employable for a good long while, and I’ll be able to make ends meet. I have good parents and good siblings, and while it’s terribly true that you can’t ever go Home again, at least everyone is still around.

I do miss my sister, who is currently on the other side of the continent these days. But what’re you gonna do? The world is a big place.

But the thing that all this meandering rumination has lead me to is the fact that I am faced with something rather unique these days. Up until recently, my life had been pretty well tracked, frequently by forces not under my control. By sheer fate and circumstance, I ended up traipsing up and around the country in four to five year intervals, and always that carrot and stick would get yanked another four or five years beyond my grasp. But now, that carrot and stick is kind of stationary. The clock is counting down. In two years, one month, and two weeks, I will be, for all intents and purposes, the master of my own destiny. A part of me certainly quails at the idea of such massive freedom and responsibility resting on my shoulder. (Don’t screw this one up like you did with all the others!) But another part of me is sort of waking up, bewildered, almost aghast that this is actually going to be real one day in the future.

For once I have no idea what the future will bring, and that actually feels pretty good.

Weird, huh?

But, yeah, I found that one technique that seems to work with improving my mood is to tell myself that tomorrow is going to be better than today. It doesn’t matter if it’s not really true (because, after all, how can we predict the future?) What matters is that I believe that tomorrow is going to be different from today. And you know what they say about change and goodness and all that.

But I think a lot of my insanity rests in this idea that I’m going to be stuck where I am forever, trapped in this gray mist of indeterminancy and solitude for the rest of my life. Which, objectively speaking, makes no sense. Whatever I do, I’m going to go somewhere. It may not necessarily be a good place to go, but I can guarantee it’s going to be different. But I guess that’s a good part of my pathology: this delusion that everything is going to remain horribly the same, that no matter what I do, it’s all going to end tragically.

Sure, it could all end tragically anyway, but the important thing is that I don’t know that for sure.