On those days I went to bed early and tried not to over sleep but it was hard, my body felt heavier in the morning. I remembered what it was like to leap out of bed with an eagerness for the day but that feeling was long gone. I’d made the mistake of double dosing on the melatonin and that was part of it. I researched it the next day and they said one of the side effects was “peculiar dreams,” to which I could attest. The dreams, the melatonin, held me in the claw of some mechanical device or glove, a dull pressure pinning me into place. We tried to game the system, the season, by sleeping through. I did, at least. I lit candles and cooked soup, sat with a blanket morning and night. Let my exercise lag, put on some weight. Watched as the hole in our backyard got deeper, the spot where the large cottonwood had rotted out. All there was to do come spring. And no amount of gumption to do it.

Categories: Memoir, prose, writing

Tags: creative nonfiction, Memoir, mid-life crisis, pacific northwest, prose, William Pearse writer, writing