Still

I'm sitting on my back door step, writing this under a sky that threatens to storm. Occasional flashes and distant growls. The wind rushing through the leaves sounds like rain or like faded applause. My old yellow dog is uneasy and whining nervously. Across the open field behind my house, in the distance, I can hear the fire station horn blaring, cycling up and down the tones. My thoughts are swirling, but mostly, I keep coming back to one: try to be still.

An old friend once told me that I am always moving, pacing, doing, running. "You're never still, you know." She smiled at me when she said it so I couldn't take offense. But this struck me.

I asked her what she meant. She said that as long as she has known me (more than 25 years), she has never seen me stop. "You're always into something, moving towards a goal or something. You just go, go, go. And that's alright for the most part, but you know, at some point, you gotta relax. You gotta learn to breathe."

Stop. Listen. Breathe.

But the truth is... I don't know how to stop moving. I've heard that sharks must move or die - they need that continual motion in order to keep water flowing over their gills, in order to breathe. Maybe I am built like that. Maybe this never-stopping is how I keep breathing.

"Don't you ever get tired?" she asked.

I thought about it. Sleep is a relative stranger to me. When I was young, I used to try to keep awake as long as I could because I was plagued with night terrors and nightmares. That part never really changed. These days, I sleep, but just enough. I grow tired just like anyone else, but the fatigue gets shoved aside because I can't stand its slowing effect.

The sky is rumbling again, but the wind has stopped. An insect is chirping in the field. I've been sitting here for more than twenty minutes. My mind is a mangle of thoughts that I can't get straight. And that old feeling is rising up inside me again...

I'm leaving.