In Absentia

"Non male loquare absenti amico"

Speak no evil of an absent friend
Titus Maccius Plautus (254 BC - 184 BC)

I've been absent. 

Oxford defines absence as 'the state of being away from a place or person' and 'the nonexistence or lack of'

That's how it feels. Like being away. It feels like nonexistence. 

It's coming into the longest, darkest nights again and true to the season for me...it's just flat-out the toughest time of the year.

When the daylight is so short...the world is a harder place. It's been that way as long as I can remember.

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Pushing through is hard. It's hard to talk. It's hard to engage. You just do and that's about all you can do. 

You put on your face like you put on your coat before you go out the door. You dance on the thin edge between smiling and not. Patience is a virtue you struggle to find. Your fuse is short and easily lit. Everything aches. Sleep is a troubling thing. You find yourself at the window with the 'thousand-mile stare'...watching but seeing nothing.

It's isolating. Surrounded by everyone, you're lonely. You miss people. You miss people forever gone. You miss people across town. You miss people across the room. You miss people because they don't seem to miss you. You wish some old friends would call but you hardly know if you can answer or what you'd say if you did. You miss them but can't bring yourself to reach out yet again. So you wait. There's been so many times...

And frustrating. You wish everybody wasn't angry all the time. Smiles without fangs. Laughter without snarls. Conversations without rage. Simple words with nothing underneath. Hoping you can say something...anything without some kind of awful consequences. For a break from absolutes.

And exhausting. Time is relentlessly out of synch with the hour. Little things become big things as fast as flipping a coin. You fear that anything you do for yourself takes away from someone else. You wish you didn't feel like you have to be everything to everybody every day. You wish for a lack of crisis...lack of doubt. You wish you could rest enough to somehow not feel worn out. Weariness walks with you and whispers defeat.

And yet...

Yet still somewhere under all the dark you hope for warmer days and dreamless nights. A tiny hope for quiet and calm that seem so very far right now. For even a few things to be alright.

It's only that little thing that keeps you present perhaps. Small it may be but it speaks to the hard winter and the wind. It says that spring will come. It says you're not completely alone. It reminds you that it might not always be so dark if you can just hang on.

Yes...just hope and hang on. If it's all you can do, it'll have to be enough. Make it through today. Make it through the week. Lean in through the month. And hope that one day soon the sun might shine a little brighter, the ice could find itself in a puddle, the Hope Tree will bud and...with a little luck...absence itself might just be absent for a while.