Word Whispers and Sight Seeing

How do you live a normal life when you have words whispering in your ears every waking hour of the day and even in your sleep?

Jotted down on scraps of paper, both physical paper and bits of cyber notebooks. I run my hand through my hair and wonder “How will I ever collect them all?”

Tactile reality chirps and waves to draw me back to tree bark, water, and a wood tick crawling on poor Latte. “Earth to Maery,” it says.

My thoughts jump again and I follow them past the milestones of youth:

• Learning to ride a bike 
• My first day of school 
• Becoming a teenager 
• My first boyfriend 
• My first heartbreak 
• Getting my driver’s license
• Graduating from high school 
• Going to college
• Living away from home for the first time 
• Getting married 
• Having a child

Then I think about the milestones at the top of the hill where there is more of a feeling of leaving than approaching.

That’s not as morose as it sounds. On this part of the journey, I see and appreciate so much more the simple, the every day, that is familiar but not quite ever the same.

I see that it’s what I should have been paying attention to all along. Details, people, seeing below the surface and appreciating every bit of it. But it’s not too late.

Despite what they say about aging eyes, I think my vision is ever improving.