October 15th. The last day to file your tax return late-but-still-on-time (as long as you don’t owe anything).
It’s been this way for decades: frantically trying to pull shit together at the beginning of October. Feeling overwhelmed, faced with everything I’ve failed to do responsibly.
Except I am less frantic as the years go on, and more just plain fatigued by failure where I used to feel glimmers of hope and possibility and self-confidence. That things would get better or not be this way forever. Instead I seem to dig myself deeper every year.
I did not get the taxes done in time. I’ll still be working on them tomorrow. And the next day. On and on for what feels like an eternity: never caught up.
I feel like I’m stuck at the bottom of a deep hole with no way in sight of getting out. My energy as I get older waning to the point of just dragging my eyes open. Dragging myself from one edge of the day to the other. Defeated.
I feel like I’m stuck at the bottom of a deep hole.
When I had this thought tonight I immediately thought of all of Haruki Murakami’s characters who’ve been stuck alone in the bottom of deep wells or holes. Sometimes voluntarily. All of the time I’ve spent with them down in these holes. Together, alone.
At first I was comforted by memories of all the time I’ve spent in deep holes with Murakami. But then I thought no … it’s different with them. Stuck down there because of loss or trauma. Disciplined characters. It’s my own fault I’m down here. I dug my own grave; those guys didn’t.
But now it’s coming back to me. How we get out of a deep well.
Something about acceptance. A journey of immense solitude. And some inexplicable aid or spiritual ladder coming just in the nick of time.
It is comforting to know I can be in my deep dark seemingly-inescapable hole and in a murakami book hole creation at the same time, if I want to go there.