The day after

It’s the day after. When I went into work this morning, a co-worker took one look at me, and said, “Boy, you look tired.” I was tired, yes, but it’s more than that. I didn’t go to bed until three in the morning, after some frenzied writing. There had been a writing project that I had intended to do for myself, and, yesterday, I finally started it. I had spent the evening feeling restless and emotional, and turned to my computer for comfort. I opened up my word-processor when it was way past bedtime on a weeknight, and started the click of keys that would continue without ceasing for three hours. I have sixteen pages. It’s a jumbled mess, but it’s down. In those three hours, my eyes did not stray from the screen, and I was so deep in concentration that I didn’t even notice that I had tears running down my face at times. I only noticed when they started to burn the tender skin underneath my eyes. I had not thought it was possible for my tears to burn my skin, but there you have it. They were tears of neither joy nor sadness, but of catharsis.

One day soon, I’ll share those sixteen pages with someone, even though I wrote them mainly for myself. I might not even polish the writing up. There’s something about the disjointed style that captures the mindset of that particular moment, of that intense narrowing of my world into my fingertips, the channeling of words that flowed so smoothly from mind to hand to bright screen.

So, yes, I’m tired today. Yet, there’s a calm within me that I have not felt for a very, very long time.