Territory

What is it,
To be a person?
To be whole,
In the self?
To not rely,
On others as defining borders?
To know,
What makes you who you are?

In so many ways,
The gimpy child learning to walk
To say no
To stand up
And shout out loud

Feeling forever pushed
I, the jellyfish
And the world,
Immovable stone

It's no lottery
No qualifications needed
To decipher
Which bends first

How to draw the line,
Around myself
And decide what's on
Which side

The skill and tool of the secret self
The ugly face buried underneath
But has to be enough
Because I can't be anything else

Needing to give up
On trying to fit
And to please
Disengage the guilt reflex
That comes
With the feather touch
Of you're not
Given in to

If fear is the goddess
To which we all bow
The question begs
What's the paralyzer?

Pony up to the counter
I'll have a double
Of loneliness and disapproval
For the road

I learned well
By the hand
Always a good student
In my pleated kilt

But the truth avoided
The lesson never learned
We are all alone
And forever, I am on my own
Terrifying though that is

You gotta look before you go

Wisdom and emotion.
Like Locke and Jack warring within me
A haze of confusion
That spins and whirls and leads nowhere.

I'm supposed to know what exactly?
I'm supposed to be who, exactly?
Drawn to the words those red red lips utter
About time and patience
And the eating of an elephant.

I shy away from the loss
And hold on to the glitter
For long moments
After it's done lasting
Wishing to make that square peg round
And knowing better than the wish
But pushing it anyway
Pleading ignorance to myself
And feeling the fool
All the while.
All the while.

I think about regret a lot
Do you regret being dumb
Or not following
Your emotions more?

Can you trust your feelings,
When they are inherently entangled
In fear and guilt
In stupidity
In mistakes?

Can you trust your judgment,
When it is so often wrong?
And bound up
In trying to find redemption?
In making
The equation equal out
Somehow.

And so I am undone
Because I trust neither.
And Neo tells me
"Just sit quietly
The answers will come."

Will they?

The Horizon

I'm not saying it's going to stop.

It's a given that self-discovery, self-improvement, the voyage will continue.
It must continue, to some degree.
That is the very nature of the human condition.
We must perpetually struggle to learn about ourselves, to decipher the things we have done, to discern who we wish to be, and then of course, the battle and the effort to align ourselves with that which we want.
All of which is of course, extremely difficult.

For the past 8 months or so, I have been intensely on such a journey. It's as if I had slowly been washed out to sea. As though for years I was becoming untethered, lost to myself and my truth.
And then, suddenly, I needed to return to the shore of myself.

That struggle, that return, has been my own personal odyssey. And it has been excruciatingly painful and extremely difficult. The unearthing of ugly truths, of beautiful facts, of deeply entrenched conflicts. Learning about people, about relationships, and above all, about myself. It's been terrifying. It's been soul-crushing and fulfilling. It's been challenging and loving. But mostly, it's been very scary and very hard.

And it's ongoing.
I'm not done yet.
By one argument, I will never be done, because (as I'm discovering) life is not stagnant, it keeps moving.
But at the same time, I can see an end to this period of intense introspection and growth. I can see it on the horizon, even if I haven't reached it yet.

And I have to wonder: what the hell am I going to think about and talk about if not this?
For almost a year I feel like I have been having 3 long conversations with many people in a sort of tapestry of learning.
And as I see those lengthy discourses coming to an end, I can't help but wonder if I will be boring and have nothing to say in their wake?

Maybe I will call him Walter

I didn't sleep again last night. Which blows.

Especially since I have done nothing for 10 days or so, just hanging around, watching tv. It was good. It was necessary. I needed the rest.

I'm still hacking and coughing, which is all so pleasant and lady-like, but I'm getting better. I know this because I am essentially doing the same, but with a decreasing amount of chemical assistance.

So, I was looking forward to having been rested and starting back at real life today, refreshed. Instead I was thwarted by the demon Anxiety. He loves me. He visits me regularly. We have little parties in the middle of the night. I feed him cheerios and coconut covered 'snowballs'. I don't actually like him though and wish he would stop coming around.

Last night I tried to trick him. I used Jesus against him, seeing as he is a demon. It worked for awhile, he was lulled by academic interpretations of the First Testament and the Ecclesiastes. But when I snuck back upstairs, he awoke again and several more hours passed before he was appeased and I could fall asleep. So needless to say, my dream of a restful return to work with the new decade and the new year were essentially for naught.