What am I Waiting For?

My son plays a game with me sometimes when I call him and ask him to come to me. He plants his tiny 2-year old feet into the ground and says, "I'm stuck! I'm stuck!" And then he tries to move with this imaginary spider's web holding his little feet. Finally, he "breaks free" and runs to me with arms wide open, laughing at his little joke.

He came up with this on his own. Just one day, he was "stuck." And I laughed and it became his schtick.

And now, I am stuck. I can't seem to move forward. The fantasy life I have created in my head has become a comfortable replacement for the reality of achieving my goals.

Don't get me wrong, my life is good and maybe I am just so bad at being kind to myself that I don't know how good it is. But, still, when I am quiet and look deep inside, something is missing, something isn't quite right.

I have unsuccessfully tried everything along the way to fill this hole - drinking, smoking, eating, sleeping around, but none of that works for long. The party ends, I cough up a lung, I get too fat and every man starts to look the same.

I want desperately to be whole, to be filled, but where do I find it? Can I order it from Amazon.com? Will a new job do it? Maybe another baby to put in daycare and feel guilty about?

In my fantasy world, I wake up in the morning happy to be alive, filled with creative energy. I don't crave cigarettes and I don't spend the day wondering what else there is.

One summer, I had a job working in an office that had daily deliveries from UPS. We had the same UPS man every day and he was the happiest man I had ever met. He came in every day whistling and singing with a bounce in his step.

On my last day at that job I got up the nerve to ask him why he was so happy. I wanted his answer to be something like "I take 500 mg of Vitamin B every day" or "I snort cocaine every morning" or even "I had a frontal lobotomy.'

No, his answer was "I've accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior."

Crap.

Can I buy that at Amazon.com?