65,000 Miles, holding pattern

I have nothing profound to say right now, but I have to say something, so I'll let Paul Simon say it for me.

"And I know a father
Who had a son
He longed to tell him all the reasons
For the things he'd done.
He came a long way
Just to explain
He kissed his boy as he lay sleeping
Then he turned around and headed home again.
He slip slided.
Slip slidin' away.
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away."

In my course of making sure that I had gotten that lyric correct, I discovered that there was a "missing" verse from one of Mr. Simon's greatest songs, The Boxer. Somehow this fits today:

"Now the years are rolling by me
They are rockin' evenly
I am older than I once was
And younger than I'll be and that's not unusual.
No it isn't strange
After changes upon changes
We are more or less the same
After changes we are more or less the same."

The point is that I'm still me. After all I've been through, I'm still the 15 year old kid went walking in the desert outside of Tucson, Arizona singing Doors songs to myself and dreaming about designing home for myself in the foothills of the Santa Catalina mountains. I still want to spend my Saturdays playing basketball all day long until I drop. I still expect mystery and opportunity around every corner, and know for certain that life will be an adventure once I leave my hometown and never look back. I still want to use my intelligence, energy, and sense of humor to make a fun and rewarding life for myself. I still want to be the best dad ever, laughing and smiling with my children each day.

So how is it that I'm sitting here at age 38 in my parents' basement with the two loves of my life, my kids, hundreds of miles away, and my wife hundreds of miles away in the other direction, with a job that, in spite of its promise, is depressing because I know it's my only ticket out of a lifetime of struggles, and no hope of ever having even any semblance at all of the life I wanted? I know that few people truly realize their dreams, but I never thought that I'd this dead end at such a young age, when it has already become clear to me that my joys in this world will be small ones, restricted to isolated moments when I can allow myself to forget about my failures.

Will I ever get the chance to explain myself to my children? If I do, will I just kiss them on their foreheads while they're asleep and walk away? Perhaps that's enough for them. Perhaps they really do know how much I love them and how sick I am that my life has become what it is. Perhaps they understand that it was their mother who pushed me out the door and created conditions under which I had no choice but to leave their little town to get my life back in order.

Either way, it's little comfort to me. After changes I am more or less the same, and the person that I am at my core is sick and disgusted of this life I'm living and completely at a loss about how to improve it. I'm resuming couseling this week, but I am already certain that the fifth person I'm seeing is going to do any more than the first four did, which is to tell me "wow, that's a tough situation," and "you have to fake it 'til you make it."

Cue Mr. Simon:

"I know I'm fakin' it
I'm not really makin' it
This feeling of fakin' it-
I still haven't shaken it."