Not Making a Thing Out of It

It would be easy to read the signs and infer that all hell is about to break loose. You can't sleep for the heartache, the questions, the feeling that all is lost. Thoughts don't go anywhere, but just spin in a knotted skein. On your birthday you dislocate your thumb doing your favorite of things, a mountain bike ride, something you used to be pretty good at but that now beats you up and down and inside out. People don't answer your emails or text messages or phone calls or distress signals. Bills keep piling up before checks arrive. The only things you really want get taken by someone else, get lost, or break. Nobody wants to publish your life's work and the critiques you get back show they don't understand what you are saying. You don't need to look at politics or foreign policy insanity to add your unease, sharpen your fight/flight edge. The signs right here, close to home, are clear enough. You spend the afternoon getting drunk by yourself and liking it, a lot. It's the only time you have felt good for a while. You are the only one who seems to believe what you know to be right. It's all just what is, you say to yourself. No need to get your shorts all in a bunch, no need to make a federal case or big thing out of it. Just let these hard days go by. You'll get some sleep eventually. Eventually. Or not. What is the price paid for overlooking the signs?