Once

He was once a big fish.

The pond was smaller then, true, but he paraded through it proudly. He marked his territory, he made a name for himself, he always spoke to be overheard. He out-alpha'ed every alpha male.

But the world changed without him noticing. The pond became a lake, became a sea, became an ocean, and one day his language was outdated, his knowledge old hat. His name became lore, part of history while he was still living. His time was over.

His world is so much smaller now, and the outside world so much more extreme. It frightens him. He makes small trips, tentative motions, trying to keep up with the tide. More and more, he sees on tv things he's never heard of, places he's never been. Mostly, he thinks about his pond.

Once, he was a big fish.

Contradictions

The things I want are often also the things I don't want, and this is both bewildering and overwhelming. The house in the suburbs, the lawn, the dogs, the nursery to be occupied by beloved round-faced cherubs who will consume my life and rob me of my sleep.

Deciding to move to a smaller town both consoles and disappoints me. It will be safer, it will be friendlier, it will provide my future children the innocence I was so lucky to have. But it also feels like an end to my wandering, an end to exploring, an end to growing in the way I've always grown. This new direction also marks the end of one long followed.

Planning for a life is both limiting and exhilarating. To know where I'm going makes me at once eager to get there, and numb at its inevitability. And the contradiction can be exhausting.