Crowded

When I was little, we used to sing a chant about bears in a bed. It was a counting game of sorts...and it went "Five bears in the bed and the little one said, 'I'm crowded! Roll over!' So they all rolled over and one fell out - four bears in the bed and the little one said..." You get the picture, right?

That's how life feels these days. Only no matter how many times things roll over, nothing falls out of the bed. It only grows more crowded. And I feel like the sheet, stretched as tight as possible to cover everything.

And yet, try as I might to stretch and reshape to get it all covered, I fail. Little bits and pieces start to slide out from under me, followed by bigger more substantial parts. Slowly, life drifts apart and I'm hustling to and fro trying to recover those things that have escaped my grasp.

It is this sense of lost control that pervades my mind. Even my dreams are fragmented, disjointed snatches of lost moments or anxious reenactments. I am starring in The Actor's Nightmare. Forgetting tests. Getting lost.

I am an overpromising underdelivering machine these days. I am late for work and lethargic and foggy when I get there. I forget to make calls. I can't find time for emails. The blog languishes. Family waits impatiently for me to join. Friends send out S.O.S. signals in the wake of my disappearance. I don't write. I don't read. Nothing is organized. Everything is frantic. I am everywhere and nowhere. I am responding but never enough.

It is like being lost in a crowd...taking up space, cognizant of yourself as existing. But so easily lost, discounted, nearly invisble. There but not. Taking up space but not really mattering.