I sat on the edge of the whirlpool, feet dangling in the steamy water, alone and contemplative in the early hours of this morning. The jets had just stopped and the water was still churning around, trying to find peace and harmony after what was an eruption of utter chaos for 10 minutes of its life. As I watched tiny little whirlpools spin and slowly succumb to the calm, I pondered the question “what am I doing here?”

The thought of “here” itself is enough to bring the wheels of my brain to screeching halt. 

Where is “here?” 

What is “here?”

Here is confusion. Here is lack of direction. Here is lack of determination. Here, is depressed. Now don’t go calling the psych ward or therapists or people to help me deal with my depression - because it’s not a depression of self-indulgence or “oh woe is me” depression. It’s a depression of disappointment in myself. 

I’m disappointed that I’ve let myself get this far without knowing where I’m going. I have no goal, no dream, no destination to get to. Nothing concrete, anyway.
My train of thought begs a change of scene, so I walk back to my locker and grab a couple of magazines that I’d hidden away so I could look at them and drool - Dwell, and Travel+Leisure. A short walk back to the empty Sauna I sat down and contemplated my fate. Considering that I’d already been through Dwell three times, so I decided today to opt for Travel+Leisure to look at all the places I would never go.

And there go the dreams again. Never. Can’t. Won’t. 

Not me.

It’s not in me.

After a few minutes of reading about $500 dinners in Germany and spending $14,000 to rent a villa in the South of France, I was spent. Hot, heavy-hearted and down on myself, I hit the showers.

Like the morning spa, sputtering hot air for 10 minutes in a fury of turmoil, heated effort and mass confusion only to be left idle and unused, I feel like I have worked hard to get to get myself into a dream that isn’t even mine. This world I am living in now, is not me. It’s taken pain and suffering and time and money and effort and thought and thinking and it’s not who I know myself to be.

This world I am in now, I have been living for others and only slightly injecting my wants into it. 

I keep looking, keep hoping, keep praying that someone will come along and show me the way to what is me, and what I dream, and who I should be - only that person never shows and never helps me choose a path and never puts their arm around my shoulder and never tells me “it’s going to be okay, buddy…”

I just keep sitting on the edge of the spa looking in at all the swirling little dreams fighting for their existence, only to slowly fade away into silence.