Again

There is a tiredness that has nothing to do with sleep.

It lives just below the sternum. It doesn't ask for rest. It asks for meaning — some small sign that the effort is landing somewhere, in someone, in some version of the future you can almost see.

The mystics had a word for this passage. The dark night. Not depression. Not doubt. The specific exhaustion of the sincere.

Comforting. But here is what I think.

St. John's actual dark night wasn't noble weariness. It was freefall. The consolations of faith — gone. Nothing replacing them. Not dignified. Terrifying.

What if the effort isn't landing anywhere?

Not as a dark thought. As an honest possibility.

In the Shivapurana, Vishnu meditates for ten thousand years. When doubt breaks him open, Shiva appears — not to console him. To say: begin again.

I check my analytics every few hours. I know this about myself. I do it anyway.

To know is not to be free of it. It is only to carry it with open eyes.