hazy

It’s catching up to me. There’s an ominous feeling. The closest thing that relates is the increased humidity and wet smell of a thunderstorm. I can’t see it like the dark clouds on the horizon, but there’s a weight to it.

The haze—the only name for it I can think of—used to come quite often in high school. It was around longer then too. In college the haze came less frequently. The drink may have ebbed its effects. For the year I was moving furniture it only came around two or three times. It’s caught up to me a few times already in the last couple months.

It comes with a feeling of distance from myself. Like going through the motions, or floating with a current. It’s hard to focus. I read less and watch more television or movies. I eat too much or too little. The headaches are worse and I sleep less. Thoughts are jumbled and flow into one another. It’s harder to be around people. Everything is less interesting. And then, after a few days, it’s gone.

It’s easier to handle them now. Generally people don’t notice it and I only mention it to a few. People don’t typically care to know, but I can still feel when it’s around. It comes around when I’m too busy, too tired, too caught up in everything else. I just need time to think. Time to sit, read, decompress, and find myself again.

Maybe it builds up and makes guys buy overpriced transportation in their middle-age. Maybe it’s why middle-aged women stereotypically buy worthless things. Is it the haze they’re trying to distract themselves from? That feeling that they’re too far away from where they should be? Do they hope to compensate for the disconnect?

Will it come and go until I pass on? Does everyone get their own form of the haze? Is this the price we pay for breaking out of the natural line? Is the defiance of nature coming back to haunt us? Sparking the necessity of drugs that alter how we think, feel, and act?