Penny Post #32: Sudoku
Winning Sudoku has allowed me to lose all else.
There’s a faint hum in the morning upon waking. My mind is foggy and I can’t quite put together where the hum is coming from nor why it is getting softer the more I wake up. I want to find its tune, understand where it is coming from and why it is calling my name, but the faintness soon becomes nothing at all.
The hum has disappeared into the recesses of my mind, overcome by thoughts of what the day holds.
Laundry. Groceries. A 7 hour drive back to San Diego. Phone calls scheduled. Breakfast. Yes, breakfast. French toast? Syrup? Fluffy, fluffy. Sugar. SUGAR!
Yes: this is my brain when the morning fog disappears and sugar comes barreling in. Before I find the sugar that my brain yearns for, I wonder where I’ve lost the tune of waking.
It’s not in the sheets. It’s not under the pillow. It is certainly not behind the blinds blocking out the sun. I’ve lost it somewhere in this room. I’ve lost it to the next morning, where I may or may not be lucky enough to catch it. Most of the time I lose the noise when I pick up my phone to check the time, and suddenly I’m pulled into unanswered text messages, emails, and Instagram notifications.
It is not just the tune that I’ve lost. Most days, it feels like I’ve also lost myself.
Most days I can’t write.
Most days I sink into numbness.
Most days I return home burdened by hopelessness.
It would be easy to blame this on work. Working at an Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) is understandably draining. The needs of our patients and their loved ones are deserving of all of my attention, yet I find that my droves of empathy are all but empty when I return home to myself. Moving across the country without the robust support of my close friends and family certainly isn’t doing me any favors. My writing - the thing that I hoped would free me from this isolation and numbness - has been everything short of momentous.
It is not just the tune that I’ve lost. Most days, it feels like I’ve also lost myself.
In my desperation, I’ve turned towards Sudoku.
Thirteen dollars worth of Sudoku puzzles and hours worth of frustration, gratification, and ignorance. This little puzzle of single digits and boxes and columns and rows and patterns has taken up all of my free time. Thirteen dollars well spent.
I’ve turned to numbers and have lost words.
Which is probably why it is so hard to hear that tune in the dim morning light. As I’ve explained before, to write I have to sink to where oxygen is no longer and sunlight goes to die.
Sudoku is an effective life vest.
Yes, I am writing this essay while my Sudoku book rests just inches from me. But writing this has felt burdensome and heavy and not at all relieving. I long to write my last word, find the last period, and lose myself to another puzzle.
Yet I know that my writing is as if the powerful waters of a reservoir which the dam of Sudoku will not be able to hold forever. I will continue to act as if the most productive beaver and build my dam to hold back the waters of truth.
You know as well as I do that that dam is destined to break.
Until then,
Kiera