The Distance

On the version I keep losing

I feel empty without worry. Hollow. I don’t know what to do with this emptiness.

This happens when things go my way. When there is no problem to solve, no fire to walk into, something inside goes quiet and I don’t know what to do with the quiet. So I stray. I do things I don’t like later. React when I shouldn’t. Say things I shouldn’t. It’s like I get uprooted from who I am. Like distress is the only thing that puts me back in the ground.

The best version of me is steady without distress. He does things for the doing. Not for what comes after. Not for the next thing in line. Not even for tomorrow.

But my wants pull at me.

I want to listen when I am being spoken to. And those are not unimportant conversations. I want to be at ease in that room, in that conversation. But my mind is already somewhere else. Turning over something from the morning, or drifting toward something that hasn’t happened yet. I come back, and then I’m gone again.

I want to be in that room, fully, without part of me already moving toward the door.

I want to stop trying so hard. So hard in so many things. Like, to shape my son.

I want to: not interrupt him, not stop him for every thing, not treat every moment with him as something to correct.

My best version listens to him. Accompanies him. Laughs with him. Gets to him when he needs him. He waits before he responds. He doesn’t react. He gives space to others and he is not hard on them. He is not hard on himself either. He doesn’t chase the next thing. The next opportunity. The next chance to move. That version is patient. With everything around him, and with himself.

I don’t think the disquiet in me will ever go away. Nothing that’s inside me, nothing that’s part of me, ever goes away. The anger. The angst. The frustration. The pull towards these. The need for them. Some days it doesn’t feel like a problem. It feels like a want. Like something I reach for before I’ve even decided to reach.

That is the version I am. Today. Some days back. So many days back. It will be here in the future too. Not far from now. Just around the corner. Very far from my best version, but very close to where I stand.

I am scared. My best version will not be scared. He will not be angry. But that version feels so far I can’t see him. Can’t picture him. When I try, the image doesn’t hold. It feels unreal. Like something that belongs to someone else’s life, not mine.

There is a real chance things get worse before they shift. Worse than the worst I’ve known. And then continue from there, without a bottom in sight.

I sit with that. I don’t have another choice.

What I keep coming back to is not the gap itself. I’ve known the gap a long time. What I can’t put down is the question underneath it. Whether movement is possible. Whether I am the kind of person who can cover that distance, or whether I will keep returning to the same place, the same reaction, the same mind that won’t stay still.

I wonder if I will ever know.