Tourist in Mourning

I've been a tour guide or tourist for about three weeks now.

Honestly, I'm pretty pooped out. Not that the sea of people that have been coming through aren't welcome. It's almost as if I just wish I could have a whole day to myself and then resume.

Whenever I can't sleep I pretend the whole world belongs to me for a year. No one is in it but me. (There is a host of rules and things to keep it sustainable for a year, but we won't get into that.) I can go in any door, drive any car, even fly a plane around for fun.

Right now, I would dig that.

The problem is I know that in two weeks I would be lonely. Suddenly all those people would be greatly missed. The sidewalk rage I feel down St. George's Street would even be missed. And I would also think of my friend who is gone, which would in the end make me a little ball of pathetic in the middle of whatever palace I had decided to take over that week.

A while ago I had a friend whose father passed away. He said that he felt like the whole world should've stopped as it had all stopped in him. Yet everything kept going, his kids kept growing, you can't freeze time. So I am a tourist in mourning. Next to me dear friends and loved ones I want to cling to, while at the same time wanting to go back and grab at something gone. Like forgetting to take a picture of yourself in front of some important building that gets destroyed the next day due to a natural disaster.

This is a difficult ride right now. But tomorrow is work and some bit of normal. I have to grasp for normal, and appreciate what is here right now.