Mood Score

When the quiet becomes its most crushing, he assigns numbers to his feelings, then adds and subtracts to reach an outcome on his mood. His mood score, if you will. 

It’s 3:22 a.m. and his mood score has gone negative. The sheets are damp, but he can’t figure out if it’s because of the darkness of his thoughts (that’s a subtraction) or the warm summer’s night.

It’s the heat (OK, we’re maintaining). But there’s no breeze to cool down the tiny house he calls home, and that spells trouble. Frustration leads to anger and that will nick his score. He pushes a single top sheet off his body, wanting to kick it angrily  into a crumpled mess.

“Focus.” 

He swings his feet from the bed and rises gingerly. Time has been somewhat kind to his looks, but the miles have piled up. Six surgeries in his 47 years and it takes three, 400 milligram ibuprofen to get his body to something close to functionable. He waddles on stiff ankles to the bathroom, pops the bottle lid in the dark (he’s done this so many times before), turns on the tap, swallows the pills and washes down with water scooped from a cupped hand. 

His eyes have adjusted to the dimness and he sees the bed. He decides against getting back in. It’s too disruptive and he’d just fidget, stare into the blackness, until either sleep returned, or the alarm rang. 

He sighs, timid with a hand over his mouth, and slowly walks out the bedroom door, down the hallway, through the kitchen, into the living room where he stops in front of the sliding glass door. The slider is open, of course, hoping to catch any breeze, but the screen is shut, and it’s locked. He thinks about this; OK, it locks, but anyone could walk right through, like tearing a tissue with a finger. 

He smiles at the absurdity. His score goes up.

He unlocks the screen, pushes it open and steps down onto the concrete back porch. It’s not so much cooler than inside, but the air is fresher and he lowers himself into a wicker patio chair. The quiet is crushing and his mind swirls with thoughts. Not happy memories or bright outlooks; the darkness reaches out like swirling smoke tentacles and his mind can’t not help but walk down a dark hallway where doors he dare not open reside. 

And it’s not like these thoughts are even all that alluring. It’s just, well, he just gets mired in them. He’s been asked to explain this, give coherent reasoning - a mental flow chart, if you will - that clearly explains why he gets stuck from point A to point B on the happiness trail. 

“I just don’t know,” he whispers into the night. 

Sleep does come, even for the briefest of time - marked in minutes and not hours - and he wakes to a brilliant sunrise, covering a full spectrum of oranges. It is magnificent, he thinks. 

Breathing deeply, he smiles and feels the warmth of his wife’s hands as she wraps them around his neck, and down his chest. The gesture nearly moves him to tears. 

“You doing OK?” 

“I am now.”

And thus, his mood score rises back into the black.