2am in Salt City

Dear you,

It's 2AM in Salt City and the only thing I can think about is the divot in the mattress, and how it keeps getting bigger night by night. At first it was just one broken spring. Then two, then three. Now a whole side of the mattress has collapsed in, leaving a person-sized imprint behind. I've thought about replacing the thing, but it has yet to reach 'my' side of the bed.

Sometimes I think about taking that mattress, taking that bed, and the couch, and the TV and my shoes and my books and putting them in a truck. And driving that truck a thousand miles north west. I imagine setting up a new life in a new place, with new worries. Different worries. Better worries?

We spend our whole lives trading worry for worry, sorrow for sorrow, trying to climb the latter to the top. To have the best worries, the most delightful sorrows. Coveted worms in our heads.

Yesterday a girl slept on top of that divot. And, honey, I think it broke me. I don't know what I'm feeling or even where I am, but today that melancholy - that old, lovely melancholy - is back. You're not supposed to like being sad, but this? This is telling me something. It's not that I want to go back to when that divot was smaller - I want a new mattress. I want new worries.

That girl's optimism, her tenaciousness, it cracked me open raw and left me to wonder what it really means to pursue a life. Tell me, honey, where do you get the energy to go on? The energy to breathe, to eat, and create? 

 

I want to watch the sunrise, 

I want to stare at the moon,

I want to jump, 

I want to breathe,

I want to see what there is to see, while I am here.

Give me fresh air, give me a purpose, give me the hope to want and the tenacity to try,

honey, 

I'm on my way.