Waking abruptly at 2 AM means one of two things. The more benign possibility is that the cats have knocked something over and the noise startled me. But both cats are curled up on the bed.
Which means it must be the second choice. My subconscious has awakened me again, preventing me from going someplace in my sleep from which there may be no return. When I drift off to sleep, my ego, superego and id are free to wander where they will. Fortunately I seem to have a built-in censor, something that blocks it when it gets too bleak. The problem is, I wake up like this, vaguely troubled, without knowing why.
There are the usual reasons. My mom's death, to go with the obvious possibility. Mother's Day is coming up, and the next day is my birthday. Those two days are sources of dread, not joy.
Dread. That's what I'm feeling now. A sense of hopelessness, feeling adrift.
Of course, I am adrift. A crappy job, a small apartment, no relationships to sustain me. I go to work, I come home, I go to bed. This is my life.
Then again, that's basically everyone's life. Work, home, sleep. We try to embellish it, to stuff it with extraneous details, but that's basically it. Maybe I'm just having an existential crisis. It's not that my life is pointless, it's that life itself is pointless.
What a relief.
Wait a second. If I'm finding comfort by embracing nihilism, thtat's not good, either. Nihilism by its very nature denies comfort. And really, I don't think life is pointless. True, it's a game we can never really win--no one gets out alive--but it can still be fun to play.
Fun. Play. Ah, that's it. That's what I'm missing. But what am I going to do about it? Go fly a kite?
Okay. Now it's 2:15. Where would I have gone if my subconscious hadn't awakened me? Should I go back to bed to try to find out? Or should I write some rambling post exploring my poor, fragile psyche?
The answer seem clear.
