bump

Where does inspiration come from?

It comes from recent rain and rainbows, music from your past, a babbling brook that loves to
gossip, fresh cut grass that makes your tennis shoes green, or a beautiful woman that takes your breath away.

It can come from babies laughing, a word on a roadside sign, the way a person treats another or it can come from a sudden flash of understanding and perspective about something you weren’t even thinking about in just that moment; as a matter of fact you haven’t thought about it in sometime then…”BOOM” there it is….

Then, there’s the other place that inspiration comes from….

It can come from the dark, when your eyes are closed and your mind is supposed to be at rest.

It can come to you in the night; where things go “bump”

When it comes, it is the type of nightmare that nightmares hope they never have….

It’s real….

I would not categorize what happened to me last night, whilst in my heavenly repose, as a nightmare.

I did not twitch, jerk, wet my bed, sweat or wake up screaming tangled in twisted blankets and all of my pillows on the floor.

I woke up quietly.

My eyes did not jerk open in alarm or horror.

They didn’t open the way eyes normally do.

They opened the way they do when you’re afraid of what you might see.

“Am I back?”

Not “awake”….”Am I back?”

I remember whispering that this morning after I laid there for a while, in the dimming light, only a small, gray sliver of light from the window to stare at.

That’s what struck me a little later.

I had gotten up slowly, musing on how real the “episode” had seemed and how much of it I remembered.

It wasn’t like your typical dream, or mine usually; running thru our fingers like water or sand as Dickinson would say.

This one was sticking….

I dressed slowly, I got up slowly, I moved slowly….

I was exhausted from a burden that I carried in my heart and mind.

As I walked up the echoing sidewalk toward the office under a cloudy, morning sky, I stopped.

Why did I whisper “Am I back” and not “Am I awake”?

Did I actually go somewhere else?

Did that mysterious part of my brain know something that I didn’t?

How else could I return from the undiscovered country of my mind unless it has known how to get there and back in the first place, like it’s been there before, as if though it were a real place.

One thing was for sure…

I don’t wanna go back there.

It is a dark place where you go to scratch at old wounds and make them bleed.

It is a place where you cannot cry, only watch.

It is a place where you only talk to yourself.

But, in Gods infinite goodness, there was no running or screaming in this “place”, nothing chasing me, nothing breathing in the dark…..

The only monster there, is me.

This is the place we go to, to re-visit mistakes and regrets as a restrained and gagged bystander, as a silent witness to your own stupidity and ignorance.

It is the place where you re-live your past and there is NOTHING THAT YOU CAN DO TO CHANGE ANY OF IT.

The only power you have is to toss your head in your sleep and moan “no….”   “No….”

You don’t gasp “wake up” because you don’t remember that you’re asleep; you know…I know, that this is as real as it gets.

In the awake place we can force ourselves to quit dwelling on the past, to get on with our lives, to quit “beating ourselves up”; we’re only human after all, we all make mistakes.

Not there, not in the undiscovered country of our minds.

The monster that is you sits across from you in a small room and tells you a story.

It is not a long story but, it is true.

….oh, so true….and dark.

“Am I back?”

You cannot protest, you cannot cover your ears, you cannot look away.

I have to look at myself.

The worst part is, is that you are unable to make excuses.

Your monster that is you, knows that you’re a liar….

He knows how I can be….or was.

And he will never….EVER, let me forget.

But, you still try to soften the condemnations….

This isn’t real….

“Am I back?”

When the monster that is you has finished with your tale, you just sit there, swathed in fresh guilt and regrets, all of the old wounds begin to fester anew.

The fresh whip marks across your shoulders, face and back burn and gape.

No one can punish you with such ferocity and relentless spite and contempt, as can the very own monster that is you.

“Look what you’ve done” it keeps saying…..

And I looked…..

Then….

slowly……

I opened my eyes.

My eyes did not jerk open in alarm or horror.

They didn’t open the way eyes normally do.

They opened the way they do when you’re afraid of what you might see.

“Am I back?”

p.s

I’m sitting here in our break-room writing this. I am looking around at the vending machines, a gurgling coffee pot and occasionally glancing up at the humming lights. I’ll tap a key or two on my laptop as a new thought or memory about last night comes to me.

“Am I back?”

I can’t tell…..

It feels….

….like that other place.