Tick tick tick
It never seemed to stop
It never seemed to slow
Tick tick ticking away at her soul
All the coulda woulda shouldas
She couldn’t let them go
Rushing to and fro
Just a little longer then home
Here and there and everywhere
Her mind was over tasked
Another call another email
Always needing that time and a half
Just to scrape by
Always by the skin of her teeth
Never a restful moment
Always in need of sleep
And what was there to show
For all the years and dedication
Heartbreak debt and loneliness
Nothing to her name
Secret dreams of accidents
A settlement just one
For what’s a couple broken bones
When you could afford to have work done
Maybe just a broken leg
Walking in front of a car
With zero debt and zero fucks
You don’t have to walk very far
Or maybe just a simple trip
A long vacation you could say
A tumble down the stairs
A slight knocking of the skull
When you’re in a drug induced coma
How could her dreams be dull
But snapped back to reality
Tick tick tick and more
She quickly realized she was late
But rushed to finish more
Everyone who knows her
Is sure to understand
In this dog eat dog world
More work is just the cure
For who has time for fun
When you can’t even afford it
Enjoying life is overrated
At least that is what she thought
But too much stress
No happiness
Something’s sure to pop
That only drove her harder
Quickly climbing up that ladder
Up up up ever higher
Where she’d stop no one could know
But something in the back of her mind
Was getting ready to blow
For late nights there were uppers
Although they hardly worked anymore
For just a couple hours of sleep
Downers were the way to go
But emptiness and loneliness
Were always knocking at the door
Sometimes the sound would make her scream
So she’d work and work some more
To drown out thoughts of nothingness
And earn those dollar bills
Just to watch them disappear
Paying off debt and buying pills
Tick tick tick
As more time passes by
The pressure growing in her mind
Steadily on the rise
Sanity declines
At first there was some blurriness
Some things were out of focus
She brushed it off as if age was the culprit
Or maybe lack of sleep was all
If it was still there a day later
She would make a call
The fuzzy shapes would all subside
Life was back to normal
There wasn’t time for any check up
Work was due tomorrow
A headache here
A headache there
Nothing out of the ordinary
Some tingling in her fingers
She must have just slept funny
Tick tick tick
Typing talking always moving
Sometimes her neck felt stiff and sore
Must be her posture
More work more
The first to arrive
The last to leave
You’d think she was the company’s star
But all that work and overtime
Only earned her even more
Time behind her computer
Chained to the office floor
Ever working always harder
More work more
Then comes another headache
Right behind an eye
She wouldn’t let that stop her
She’d work until she’d die
Every day was blurry
Bleeding into the next
Weeks months years
More and more stress
Tick tick tick
Time was rushing fast
But she couldn’t change her ways
Her future was now her past
For one night she was working late
Alone and on her own
The life not lived had ceased to give
Another hint or warning
This pace was not maintainable
She’d be there until morning
The pain struck instantaneously
From inside her head
The pressure building up
Found a way around its dead end
Internally it flowed
Turning gray a darker hue
She tried to scream
Someone help me please
A gurgle was the best she could do
Slumping down
No control of limbs
Gravity was her master
Tick tick tick
Vision blurring ever faster
Time is of the essence now
Although now it didn’t matter
There’s no going back
To change a past
And oh there goes the bladder
One by one each organ
Struggled to maintain function
For the master switch had been flipped
As hemorrhaging took over
All the coulda would shouldas
Flashed by in record time
Would she still get paid for this
She obviously earned her overtime
A silly thought
It was her last
She couldn’t even laugh
Tick tick tick
The darkness settled in
So this is what it feels like
To finally feel at rest
-Bonnie
Time and a Half…
Life As I Know It…
It’s a tad crazy to say the least. You’re up one moment and down the next. But then you zoom back up again only to fall further down, and then you’re ok. Not great. Not terrible. Just ok. And I have learned that ok is ok. It could always be worse.
But it does seem Life has its curveballs, and sometimes you just can’t hit the damn ball that’s been thrown your way. It’s football season, and why the hell am I using a baseball analogy? Whatever. Moving on. So yeah. Life. It’s the greatest adventure we will ever know. It’s our life. We make it what we want. Yes. There are plenty of external factors that can influence it for good or bad, but overall, it’s yours. It’s yours to do with as you please. Waste it. Grow it. Destroy it. Expand it. End it. All things we as humans are capable of doing with this gift we have all been given. Not that we had any say as to whether we wanted one to begin with, but I would like to think I am quite happy that I was even given this opportunity to live. To laugh. To cry. To create another life. To love.
Our parents passed this gift of life to us, sometimes by accident. They happen. Their lives will one day end, and ours will continue on for a while. It’s inevitable. We have the choice to give life to another, and the cycle continues. The first few years our lives are not our own. They are governed in some form or fashion. The attempt to mold us while we are young and susceptible to influence to become more in the eyes of our parents and others. But we grow up and realize this one major thing: it’s my life. Some people never grasp this. Some grasp it early on. Some grasp it only when they have passed it on to another. There are an infinite number of ways that people become aware of their life belonging to them. So how do we decide, out of the endless possibilities, what we want to do with it?
One thing I have learned is that life is uncertain as all fuck. I have written plenty about how my plans for my life never seem to go accordingly. It’s like I’m swimming, swimming, swimming and then WHAM! I swim into a fucking wave this hits hard! Really hard! So I get confused. Wonder what the hell just happened. How did I get pushed backwards from how far I thought I had gotten? Maybe I swim around in circles until I’m completely lost. Maybe throw in a little panic mode for good measure. Then I look at my options of how to get through the wave currently making a beeline for me to wash me up on shore. Sometimes I just have to swim over it. It might take a while, or maybe it was a small wave I could have easily dove under if I was paying the slightest attention to the details? Each wave is different. I like using the wave analogy, because even though they can stop you in your tracks, they can also make you fall backwards and tumble, tumble some more, lose your breath, force your head onto a rock, panic, tumble again, scratch your legs up pretty bad, and maybe even throw some seaweed into your face. Which seems ok until you actually experience seaweed in your face! But eventually you make it through and breath deep.
So back to this whole gift of life and the choices we make thing. We can take the highs but be prepared for the lows. We can take the lows and hope we can find that high again. Hope. An extremely important motivator. A small thing that has great influence in our lives. We can use hope for any bad scenario. It helps us look at our low points as if they are ok.
Life is full of ok moments, and life is full of good moments if we choose to see them that way. It may seem like I’m rambling on about this, but trust me. In my head it’s all perfectly laid out and makes complete sense. Or so I would like to believe. Just when I think I have it all figured out, that curveball is sent straight for my head hoping to knock some sense into it that I have absolutely nothing figured out at all. And that’s one of the beautiful parts of this gift I have been given. I’ll never figure it out, but hopefully I can prepare myself to enjoy it to the fullest. I’ve had my share of hurt and pain and heartbreak and endless wave upon wave, and I choose to look back and learn from those lessons to make my life better for the future I hope I get. Because honestly, we don’t know when this gift of life stops giving.
So, with my ramblings, I hope that you see your life as a gift too! The millions of people that have had a butterfly effect on my life and vice versa are all gifts in some way. Hopefully when I am feeling low I will think back on this post and remember the hope I have expressed here. Don’t lose hope. Don’t lose the light. Don’t forget your gift. It’s too easy to lose your way in the darkness, but don’t give up hope. Remember, we are all sharing this gift of life with each other. Maybe this time it will go as planned…
Love,
Bonnie 💙
Bonnie’s Beach 🏖 