Halfway to nowhere.

The mid-twenties are a confusion. Nothing compared to adolescence, and yet so much worse. This is cognizant confusion, where a decade ago I was gloriously ignorant and had the audacity to believe the world insane. Young enough to remember how great it was and yet too old to be that great. Young enough to want to drink a bottomless pitcher of beer and make love until dawn. To want to wake up hung-over and slide into class wearing faded jeans and a t-shirt. To want a Bloody Mary last thing on Friday night and again first thing on a Saturday morning, just before leaving to bum some tailgating food off of the alumni. Old enough to know better. Old enough to feel foolish and irresponsible doing any of these things.

Old enough… too old… not yet old…

Too old to be a child and sometimes too young to have one.

When I was one year old my Father was 30something, a step away from 40something. And here I stand at 24 with my one year old son. What stupidity or audacity do I yet retain that I think this wise or myself qualified. Does any 30something parent still harbor these desires for late adolescence? I would like to think not. And yet maybe we never get over the longing for those crazy college days. Are those alumni who we all bum food off of simply trying to relive that same day for which I yearn?

Tired.

I wake up tired and never shake it far past my heels. It follows me like the shadow at my feet. And if it ever runs away my son, the deft Peter Pan, dives after it and has it sown back on. I should give him a thimble. I wake up tired and dwell in that state the entire day until I can’t sleep the following night. It’s a lethargy that comes from doing so much of nothing, and yet it is exhausting. I chase and I play and I feed and I change. I pick up and put down and scold and laugh. And yet it is not something… not in a way which moves me. His perpetual energy is of a different sort, one that does not rub off onto me, merely taxes.

Maybe that’s why I’m so sleepless. Nights are my respite. My grasp at normality and anything adult comes in his long sleep. A chance to use words with more than two syllables and avoid harping like a broken record.

I miss the passion and abandon of college. I miss not wanting sleep in lieu of HALO, wine and sex. I miss heated debate about the meaningful and the meaningless, with no difference in involvement or inflection between the two. Meaningful then was the problems of the universe and the nature of the infinite. Meaningful now is the mortgage. But I seem to have lost my zeal for debate on that. Merely acquiescence.

Halfway to nowhere…

Welcome to the middle.