Are You Okay?

For weeks now I've been asked the same question.

"Are you okay?"

It's come from family, friends, and coworkers.  My answer has always been the same, "I'm fine."  It's not a lie, not a stretch of the truth either, but it is how I've been feeling.  I'm beginning to wonder if I know myself well enough to know if this is true or not.

Have you ever been convinced of something only to find out you were misguided?  Been so sure of a truth that turned out to be untrue?  This is where I've found myself.  I still feel okay, like everything is good, but I simply can't deny the sheer number of people who have stepped forward to check in with me.

From my mother to my wife, from friends of mine to co-workers, I've been engaged in a series of conversations that inquire into my well-being.  It's forcing me to examine myself in a way that I didn't expect.  With all I've been doing, all the directions I've been pushing myself, and all the responsibilities I feel, I have felt a little overloaded.  Creatively I've felt a bit stifled, even though my flash fiction piece is soon to be released by Echo Ink Review.   I received my contributor copies in the mail last week.

School is going good.  I'm making headway into the new business idea.  My daughter is happy, healthy, and experiencing all kinds of new growth and accomplishments.  My wife is well, although overworked in my personal opinion.  All of these things are true, but if I'm truly honest with myself, I'd have to say that all of it just makes me feel...gray.  Slate gray.  It reminds me of a poem by Richard Hugo that I loved when I was at the University of Montana.

Gray Stone

A gray stone does not change color wet
or dry. Baked on a scorched road or shaded
by cedars, underground or tossed
into a bright green sky, it's always gray.
It is the stone of earth, of the down-to-earth
no nonsense way of knowing life
does not often of its own volition provide.
A gray stone will not
change your luck or shorten the mortgage
or make you young again. It doesn't say
"now" to investments - money or love.
It doesn't say "no" when you plot wrong things
you are sure you must do with your life
or die from the drone. Keep one gray stone
in a secret place, and when those you love
are broken or gone, listen
with a sustained, with a horrible attention
to the nothing it has always had to say.

So as I consider myself in the coming days, I know I'll have to dig deeper and look for harder answers than mere surface platitudes or the standard, "I'm fine."  If those who love me see something I don't, then it's time I get to the bottom of it.