I Don't Expect You To Understand ... That This Is Who I Am.

I sat in that room, my heart as frozen as the ground outside and watched those little lights... the way they smiled and danced, the way they seemed to hold a secret about you from me. And it burned within my mind that I couldn't shine that way, that I couldn't even offer you what these sad, tacky little crystalline lights could.

And before long I wanted nothing more than to tear them down and see them in the grayest of snowbanks, suffering with the rest of us. Urging themselves to blink, at very least, once more before giving way to the darkness that was all-at-once recognizably more natural anyways. I would watch it happen as such and simply mutter that that's the way these things go. I would mutter, alrite, and smirk a little too, as if I felt better inside... and perhaps I would feel a sense of deliberate peace knowing that they were no longer around to taunt me. But, invariably so, I would also feel foolish, childish even, knowing that I allowed such stale, tasteless, inanimate objects get to me in such a way. To tear and grind at the most pertinent and life-defining places within. My head and my heart.

Yes, my head and my heart are all I can't afford to lose and yet they, like the dusty mantlepiece, so often find dirty hands rubbing wavering marks atop them to reveal their less than cleanly and underused nature. They are the control centers of all that I am and yet to suggest I have ever had them under control would be laughable, hysterical even. The unexpected turns they take, the contrasts they pull, the consistent prodding followed by the unstirrable and dim silence. No, the race and chase for control is one I have long since dropped out of; wheezing breathless, I've announced my own defeat in such an area.

I place up my firm fronts alrite; where I can provide an appearance of control and reap the ensuing emotional high, well, I will drink from those straws until the cups are bone dry. Certainly my thirst is never quite quenched but I am, as yet, unaware of any alternatives. Should you posses insight into any, you know where to find me. But based on the firm set of beliefs that I loosely hold to (always in the back of my mind, at least), I suspect there are no alternatives. I suspect we weren't created for control any more than we were created to create what hasn't already been created. As much as we all hate our limits, some of us to the point of pretending they don't exist and pressing forward to override them in every way and dimension, there they undeniably stand. Peering their cold eyes into each of our lives as if suggesting they see more of us than even we can.

And what a crude thought, that something could comprehend the pieces of me better than my very self, better than the possessor of them. Yet I admit, as much as it opens a dark indistinguishable hole in my mind that I'm tempted to dive into and get utterly lost in, the same thought has caused heaps of comfort in times past. I presume it depends on how long you sit and think upon it, how long you peer into that hole. For, you may know, it was once said, " If you stare into the abyss long enough the abyss stares back at you."

And I am prone to agree. I have noticed myself likely to get hopelessly lost in thoughts that I cannot find. Not so much the ideas that don't exist whatsoever in reality, but the ideas that I hold mere scraps of. The ideas are like pieces of a puzzle, whereby if I have connected three of four from one background, I expect and even submit that the rest of the pieces must be out there somewhere. And haphazard and worthless on their own, they must want to be united with their whole as much as I want to be the one joining them all together. For my sake, as well as Yours.

So I reach out and around, stir and shuffle with great anticipation - cautiously at first, maybe out of fear of ruining any evidence that would lead me to the pieces I'm seeking... but then, eventually and usually not after much time passage, more frantically and vigorously. It becomes more of a loud scene, more of an investigation than ever before; I even start in on involving other people... though I know that those who are uninterested in the search will never find my puzzle pieces in their palms. They will not generate the answers I'm hoping for if they have not undergone the same lengths as I, and I recognize it as a task that cannot (and should not) be forced upon anyone. If, for no other reason, than simply because I have found these obsessive searchings as nothing more than completely worthless up to the present time.

As sure as night begets day and day calls forth night, I reach those aforementioned human limits and all I am starts to crash. The search stops. But never to my pleasure or comfort or satisfaction; never to give way to peace. Like a refugee who has been running and running and running to find safety and finally finds him or herself in a brilliant and beautiful new homeland, I know all too well that despite reassuring appearances, it's not truly home.

My mind wrestles to distinguish which was better, the running or this potentially more exhausting "rest" where my ear drums ring the sound of nothing through my brain and any event as small as blinking lights could set me off.

I live in that refugee state of mind for a matter of days until my senses have taken in enough of the world to drown out my own inner being... and before long I want to lay no claim over the seeking phase I had just endured and nothing about what I pieced together seems even remotely relevant to life as it is. Here. On earth. Where toes can feel cold soil and hands can run through water and cheeks are for kissing... here... where flesh and elements seem to be enough to compose reality and cause life. If only the front of my mind was all I was given, I would be apt to give in to that shallow notion. Unfortunately, the back of my mind never truly shuts up. And this whole spinning cycle, this whole chaotic and nearly psychotic process of living and breathing and searching for the truth about my existence is the reason you will find me peaceless, and pieceless, I suppose. The puzzle is incomplete. I am incomplete.

I am a girl who lives in her own two worlds, her own two modes of being. One, where I truly want to be, on the forefront of a fight for Truth when so many others have lost their vision - even most of those who claim to see - and the other, sitting on an icy sidewalk that leads nowhere, gasping for breath and pleading for the anxiety to leave.

My worlds are an undeniable contrast and both require much of me, or all of me, I suppose, as I don't believe anyone to be truly divided once they have chosen a side. Both require all, and the toll it takes on my life as I attempt to weave between these worlds is a harsh one that I feel myself paying daily. Thoughts of no one truly understanding, feelings of worthlessness as I find I'm living a compromise, dissatisfaction with friends who dwell so easily on the surface of it all, irritation at the thought that it may always be this way. Answerless. Doubtful. Forced to choose without sufficient evidence.

All this to say that I'm never really quite sure what to say. I'm never certain what I want to speak or what I want you to hear from me. Because, to me, it's so much more than what meets the eye. It's not about the surface - the smile, the pictures, the schedule. I came here to say something that compels - because I know it's out there. I want a voice.

But so often I feel it would be better to just stay silent until, if ever, I reach a place of stability and consistency.
And I guess, in all of this, at least you see me for what I really am. That often becomes the conclusion or focal point of everything I write . . . because . . . I'm not sure what other thesis would carry all my unorganized and incoherent ramblings; I'm not sure if anything else would hold it all together.

I suppose I can conclude, instead, that at least I can breathe a little deeper now, having all this self-description in ink and seeing it with plain vision. At least now I might be able to afford myself some sleep tonight.