August 22–25, 2004 — Endless times six

When I leave work now, I’m beaming. I don’t know what it is. I’m not used to beaming. It feels awkward to smile for no reason, and even more so to start again a few minutes after self-consciously stopping.

It really doesn’t make sense.

I guess I’ve been making more of an effort: Not to say things that will make people tell me that I need to be more positive. Not to think them, either. Just to think about all the reasons that things are pretty alright.

The last few weeks have helped. I’m so busy all the time that it’s hard to feel too strongly about much of anything. I work ten or twelve hours most days, and once you add on transit and things like showers and laundry, most of the day is gone. I’ve also been cleaning my new apartment, trying to get it ready for when I move at the start of September, and that eats up about an hour a day, too.

All I hope for is to get through this week; all I want is for this to continue, for me to be able to stay distracted and never to have to think again.

The trouble is potential. If I have free time, if I have goals or if there’s someone I want to kiss, each moment feels wasted. Now I don’t have a choice. All of my moments are accounted for at the start of each day, and there’s no hope of the day being better than I imagined it would be.

Sometimes I’ll think for hours about people I haven’t seen in a long time and hope that thinking about them will make it more likely that I see them again. Sometimes I see their friends and think it might almost be working. So I think harder, but nothing changes.

I was going to continue on with that, but I thought of a metaphor for the last few weeks. Or an analogy. I forget. And it involves bikes, which I guess is funny because I haven’t been able to use my bike lately because my knee hurts too much. Though I don’t think it’s very funny otherwise.

Anyway. So two weeks ago it seemed like I was biking through a forest with hills and embankments and without a specific destination; sometimes it was beautiful and exhilarating, going down hills and stopping to look into rivers and across clearings. And sometimes it was difficult, going up hills and swatting at all the mosquitoes circling and buzzing like they might be talking about me even if I couldn’t make out the words.

Now I feel like I’m back in the city; every road is flat, and I only have time to get where I’m going. I never have a chance to stop or to look at anything. It’s never hard, so my knee feels pretty alright. And because I try not to remember anything aside from bugs and going up hills, it doesn’t seem like I’m missing very much.

And that, I guess, is how the stability of loneliness and a consistent, manageable bit of depression relates to cycling.

I just need to figure out what it is about walking to the subway after work that makes me start beaming the moment the door is locked and my keys are in my pocket.

Maybe I’m hoping I’ll run into someone along the way; I still never have.

I’ll keep hoping.