the other day

I miss the sting of thorn-scratched skin from when we were kids, the smell of bug spray thick in our noses as we thundered through the foliage of a muggy summer day.  I miss the sunburns and the bug bites and the dirt in our hair and clothes.  I try to bring it back as I lead my dog through an imaginary trail of the forest, but I’m not as nimble as I had been all those years ago.  But my dog seems to enjoy leaping over weeds far taller than his scrawny little self, so I continue on.  Besides, the road shouldn’t be too far now.

Jaggers still scrape my knees, but I take pleasure in it.  It’s the kind of pain that feels good because it means you’re living.  They’re like the kind of injuries you hear people bragging about in bar rooms: “You’ll never believe this one!” a man will bellow with an enthralled grin as he tells the story of how his arm ended up in that sling—or so I would assume, seeing as how I’ve never actually been in an occupied bar.  But I watch a lot of movies, and I hear a lot of things, so I’m just assuming.

It’s only late August and the weather has chilled unseasonably.  I still keep my window open at night, sleeping only in my boxers as though in denial.  Leaves are changing, I’ve noticed, as I trod over the ground sodden from innumerous rainfalls.  My dog doesn’t seem to mind the sludge, bounding through the forest as I stumble behind.  We clear a fallen trunk and maneuver through overgrowth and back onto the freshly-tar-and-chipped road.  I feel like I haven’t enjoyed the sun enough this year.  Or for many years, even.  I miss it.  I miss spending hours in the forest, never leaving the trees until I was hungry or had to pee—even then, I went right back.

I still look for newts on the side of the road.  I miss catching frogs in the stream and toads in the yard and the occasional snake in the garden.  I go to the river once in a while.  I love the smell of it.  It reminds me of then.

My dog thinks he can chase deer three times his size.  I yank on his leash but secretly envy his vigor.  He loves taking walks.  I suppose I do too, but it’s not how it used to be.  I miss when not everything was an obligation.

I still look for pleasure in the simple things.  I say hello to the birds and do my best to avoid stepping on any caterpillars.  But it’s not the same as it was.  I miss when I was happy enough with just existing.

The days like this are what make it hardest.  The late afternoon sun slanting through the verdant canopy and striking the weed-choked ground infested with insects chirping and buzzing alike.  Where did all the pleasure in this time go?  I remember racing through the forest until dark, only to resort to playing by the light of the bug zapper, yelping when it got a particularly big one.  Now I feel only sadness, even shame at how I’m not living life nearly to the fullest; in fact, I’m barely scraping at the bottom enough to get by.  This shouldn’t be how it is.  I shouldn’t have let it get like this.

“It’s never too late,” they say.  But motivation is hard to come by these days, and what little can be found is often fleeting.  Not much can be done with it, like working by the light of a dying candle.  Tired—always tired.  Unreasonably so.  “Exercise, drink more water, no TV before bed.”  I do, I try, and I haven’t in a while.  But it’s all an obligation, even the things I used to find pleasurable.  Reading, writing, art, film, nature.  I only do it because I feel like I have to, and I when I do, I only focus on the completion rather than the process.  What’s happened to me?

It’s all gone wrong, and I’ve no idea where to go from here.  My mind is flooded with maybes, but my body is weighed down with nows.  And I’m very tired.  My dog slows as if he knows it, always glancing back.  Are you coming? he seems to ask with those cow eyes of his.  Yes, I’m coming.  

But where is it I’m going?