Gambling the time away

I hate the uncertainty of waiting for something that may or may not happen. The tottering on the edge, deciding that the opportunity will not show, or that five minutes--just five more--might do it.

If it were up to me, I would go to bed early every night.

But it's not up to me. Because I am waiting.

I wait for hours on end, motionless; yet when I abandon my watch but for twenty minutes I come back to find that what I was waiting for has come, and gone.

I am the hunter in the bush chasing after the most elusive of creatures. I am the astronomer in his tower searching for a star. I am the watcher in the tree hoping for a glint of plumage.

Maybe I could change it. If I tried hard enough. If I could plan my life the way everyone seems to expect of me. But it is so hard.

I can't stop waiting. The hope--the faintest glimmer of the possibility of a chance--keeps me here, waiting, waiting.

I tell myself that I will wait until midnight, no more. But at midnight I will wait five more minutes, just five, then ten, fifteen, twenty. After a long, long, time, I will collapse, exhausted and desolate, and sleep until I wake up to begin my watch again.

It is hard. And yet I hope.