Thursday, January 16, 2014

Day Six - January 11th - Haight/Ashbury - "Exhaustion"

     Exhaustion has hit me, and/or maybe I'm following in the line of others and getting sick.  Either way, all I want to do is sleep.

     You might think I am exhausted from too few hours sleeping too many days on the floor of a storefront church with too much light and too much noise.   But you'd be wrong.

     Since I got my air-mattress and earplugs, along with my sleeping mask, I have slept quite well, thank you.

     I believe in at least three kinds of tiredness. There's the day to day sort when you stay up too late or get up too early.  Related to that is the physical tiredness that you get when you work physically for many hours.  Yes, I'm walking a lot but I don't think it's that either.

     The third is that deep down tiredness that sleep and rest barely mitigate. The type that takes a long time to go away.  That tiredness that makes you feel like a fine thread pulled tight, almost at the breaking point.  When your emotions and your brain, your heart-self and your mind-self, have been put to the limit for far too long.  This often happens when I study, uninterrupted for too many hours too many days in a row...I forget what the sun looks like, I get so absorbed I forget about friends and family and myself for a few days.

Whatever word you use, stretched, drained, dried out...that's where I am.

     I imagine being homeless is a lot like this.  Never having a permanent, comfortable spot.  Always worrying about your next meal, your next fix, whether your stuff will be safe, whether you'll be too cold tonight.  Only for me there's an end.  I am very blessed.

     What if this stretched feeling was my life, twenty-four / seven / three-sixty-five?

     What then?  Would I go crazy? Would I adapt? Would I become suicidal?

     I can't imagine being in a perpetual state of exhaustion.

     I pray anew for people living on the streets, people living in poverty.

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