If It Starts to Crumble, It Surely Soon Will Fall

Dan and I just moved into a new apartment. It's nearly twice the size of our former place. Two floors, big open stairway. We even have a ceiling fan. This is progress, betterment, a change for the best, and in such a short period of time. Maggs, our kitten, adores this new location. He races around the clutter-free, expansive floors. He jumps from floor, to table, to ledge, to counter. And he plays on the stairs. I watched him yesterday, just after I came home from work. He is restless when we are gone, cries relentlessly when the apartment door opens, begs for attention from the minute my foot hits the living room floor. He was racing up and down the stairs. Back and forth, over and over, like a hypnotic pendulum. I watched from the living room couch, my mind and body growing sluggish in the wake of his repetition. Back and forth, back and forth, until he tripped. One paw was caught slightly off guard on the way down; his desire moved faster than his feet. He slid across the soft wood, toppled over the edge of one stair. He let out a little squeal and grabbed hold with one paw, dug one set of claws into the stair's thick flesh, his small body writhing in the air.

He's going to fall, I thought. His paw will slip and he'll come crashing down onto the TV set. He could break his back. He could break the TV screen. But I didn't move to save him. I couldn't get myself to stir. I simply watched, as he dangled from the ledge, and waited for him to fall. But fall, he did not. He got his other paw back onto the stair, and wiggled and scrambled his way back up to safety. He resumed his manic racing.

This is how I've felt lately: like half of me is teetering on the edge, and the other half just sits idly by waiting for me to fall. Sure it might be the stress of moving for the second time in less than three months. And yeah maybe it is the pressure of applying to jobs for which I am not fully qualified while working full time at a job for which I feel nothing but disdain. Whatever the reason, I'm my own worst enemy right now. It's as though my life itself is bipolar: one part a manic, Maggs-like rush, searching for jobs, applying to jobs, unpacking boxes, hanging pictures, organizing shelf after shelf after shelf. And the other part, a slow, sluggish pit of despondency. I don't feel like moving, can't pull myself up. I'm mesmerized by the prospect of watching myself fall.

I know it is just one foot in front of the other. One paw on the stair, and now the next, there you go, just pull up. But I don't have the same agility as my sweet, little kitten. Not the same gall, the same daring. I don't have that same deep-seated desire to push on through, keep on racing. It is one thing to be like Maggs and chase the imaginary, but another thing entirely to chase what is real, while knowing it may only slip further and further away. I am trying to take a lesson from a simpler species, though. Trying to adopt Maggs' Hang In There Baby attitude. I am far too deep inside my own head, too lost in the complexities of my own thoughts, my ambitions. Perhaps it is better to just keep on running, keep on chasing, keep on moving up and down. Maybe it's better to let my desire charge forward faster than my feet. Sure sometimes I'm going to slip. Sometimes I'll probably fall. But more often than not, I'll be able to pull myself back up, and just keep on racing. Right now I may be crumbling, but it's not over yet, all hope is not lost. It's just a matter of pulling myself up from the couch, of getting out of my sluggish rut. It's just a matter of being more like Maggs.