Bud, you got this problem here.  It goes like this: you wake up at 65 miles an hour.  You wake up and the whole world's already racing around you and you just have to grab something and hang on tight.  Maybe you'll live through it, maybe not.  But the whole point of it is the panic, the not-in-control panic that hits you wham in your chest about the same place that a bad bowl of chili does.  And then what, bud?

But that's us, isn't it?  Eventually the panic lulls you back to sleep.  What?!  Yeah, the panic, it gives you a nap.  Maybe it's the tension.  Maybe it's metabolism.  You burn up all your spare cycles on freaking right the fuck out, ya know?  Head hits the pillow and wham you're in dreamtown, hanging with the nightmares and their ilk.

That's it, we're like this runaway bus.  Like some cross country trip done up by B-movie horror-tone psychos.  Falling falling falling, and never ever hitting the ground.  Goddamn.

It's not so much being out of control as getting used to the fact that there is no control.  You eventually wake up and horrify yourself with the news that nothing is in control.  That you're on your own terms, making your own path.  That even though uncertainty defines you, even though your particles are fated to fit into some energy calculation, even though the fickle hand of Fate may brush it's electricity up your spine, you're still without any insight as to the big picture.  For all you know, there is no big picture.  You can't see it.

So what do you do with that mass of panic and lunging fear?  That comfort in the arms of chaos?  Do you choose order?  Do you accept the routine that got you to this fifty thousand foot drop?  Do you want to spend the rest of your time knowing precisely what you're going to be doing the day that you die because...and this is what gets me...because you do that every single day?  Odds are, I'm dead on my way to work already, I just haven't had the time to experience it yet.

We observe our lives with the luxury of the narrator, but without his powers of fortune-telling.  The disconnect between the animal in my skin and the controls behind the eyes is getting bigger, and the older I get the more aware I am of Me, and the less aware I am of Now.  One or the other, Bud.  No goddamn way you can be enlightened enough to handle your soul and the steady tick of the clock.  One or the other.

In a week or so I will turn thirty five, which is no big deal, you know?  Just another day, really.  But any marking of time in an official capacity makes me think back, and not forward.  I stopped thinking forward at 20 years old.  I don't know why, but my nostalgia gland must have overcome my pituitary, and the world takes on a misty hue with each birthday.

The thing is, we're all in this.  You and I, we're all the same organism, we're all the everything in the world.  Maybe my voice or my words mean something, maybe they don't.  But today my lesson is plain:
that illusion of control is just as real as the illusion of out-of-control.
That the world is.  Regardless of my footsteps.
That when I say "I am not sure" what I mean is, I am fine.  We do panic.  But it is short lived.