Regressing to the Mean

Truth: plenty of days slide by in which I feel I've a handle on my life, am passably impersonating responsible and mature adulthood. It's equally true that the sum of such days has these past few years far outweighed the sum of 'other' sorts of days, the aftermath sort of days. These past few weeks, however, have felt more like a regression.

I've built these past few years on running from stress, having grown to fear the instability and her repercussions, but she ever finds me nonetheless, and damn if I won't remember the quality of the mean. Three days straight I fell for less becomingbehaviors, and three mornings after renewed the question 'what've I done?'

Monday I'd the bottle, Tuesday poorly timed apathy and slumber, yesterday adventure and needless risk. After each I'd only emptiness - a feeling all too familiar - and the memories of these years back (that was three years ago, already!) all too easily renewed. At simpler and simpler vocations I find I'm falling towards my failings, this gravity all too heavy a weight to forget, and amidst it all I can't help but get lost in time.

Lost in times of other failings (that longest spring-summer-fall, among others), lost in times I still sometimes felt skilled and accomplished, lost even more in times I still believed I was accomplishing. Sure, there are still steps forward, but just as often I feel it's in negation, tumbling back. 'Do the things you love,' a friend suggested one of the last times I was falling so, but what she'd not realized: when I'm spilling out so, there's not love for much of anything, only weak attempts at damage control. But, well, you know this too.

Yesterday, then: an hour and a half, at most two hours of trail running I'd planned. Only a camera I took, the wildflowers blooming so; of course, distraction beckoned and so I was atop a peak and then deer trail traversing ridgelines in pursuit of another. Then barbed wire skirting, distinctions of public and private ever more blurry. A stand-off with a cow, a couple less thrilled rattlers, a few slip-sliding tumbles down particularly steep and sandy slopes. Dehydrated, tired, trying to find a way back out, towards town, towards water, on what I thought was a forest service access road I started down towards a canyon's mouth... only to run into a less-friendly four-wheeler. This was, in fact, private, he informed me; with begrudged blessing I continued down, then out. My hour and a half had, by my return to Proud Mary, become a five hour disaster; I'd rather not say in what poor shape I closed the run.

A similar regression the night before, though this of slumber and fatigue. We'd not had our Tuesday-Thursday after-school tutoring on account of an early graduation ceremony planned that evening; I took the intermediary hours to nap, but of course didn't wake. The alarm droned, I'm sure, but I wouldn't, didn't, couldn't hear it; not until well after the ceremony's close did I awake. Seems the more I run from responsibility and accountability the better I am at falling right through it, maybe.

Or, even the night before that: meetings after school, depressing accounts of progress not made, of funds squandered and no longer available. I'd attempted to run it off with some easy trail miles, but the day was warm, and worn so, beer the prescription of choice. But then it was just getting dark and I'd sent off best part of being shitrfaced by 8 is beiking ahitdaceds, this after the bulk of the spring'd found me restrained, moderated even, so unlike me.

It's no wonder these recent mornings have left me wondering, questioning. 'What've I done?,' indeed. More even than your postcard, it's that question, I think, that scares me most. After the regression to the mean, there's always the aftermath.