Words, Words, Words

Or I could also say Work, Work, Work. Every time I stop to think life seems insurmountable. Every time I try to look at the bigger picture, things seem impossible. Distant thunder turned out to be nearer than I could have possibly predicted.

I'm getting used to living in my own skin. I'm getting used to being alone in my head. I'm getting used to the cold in my bed. Sometimes I forget how lonely and scary that can be. Sometimes I am forcibly reminded of this very fact.

So I try not to pause. I try to keep working and toiling and working because the silence has questions which I cannot answer (What is your worth, really, as an individual? Where is your significance now?). I'm afraid that if I don't learn how to be alone now, then I never will and my entire life will be made of fear and uncertainty.

In so many ways I am still a little girl. I thought true love would give me meaning. I thought true love would give me transcendence. When the simple truth is that nothing does, nothing can guarantee you this. Life is so quick and meaningless. I'd forgotten that. Meaning comes from each day, from whatever enjoyment you can wrestle out of the circumstances you are given. I'd protected myself so well from reality with the fiction of love that overcomes all. How can I not feel the temptation to do it again? How will I search within myself now for what truly matters?

I feel like I'm too tired for tears. I feel sick to my stomach at the thought of sorrow. I'm so tired of crying and crying and feeling like my entire life has been crying. I just want to be okay. I just want to enjoy the health and happiness I have found lately. I want to sleep and wake up refreshed and stop wondering impossible things. I want my routine again and for life to feel normal again. I want to gaze towards the horizon without fear and I want to be free. I want to stop expecting so much from myself and to start enjoying the journey.

Today I want to lay on the grass and smell the sun-baked earth. But I don't want to do it alone. I want to turn around and talk, about the things I wish to do and the things that are being done. I want to talk about nothing and fill the silence with the joyful, meaningless, chatter of deep understanding. To say nothing and everything.

But there's no time. There's so much to do. I want to keep resting and resting and reading and reading and not thinking about the future and at the same time I want to WORK, WORK, WORK. I haven't wanted to work in such a long time. I want to write and to talk about writing. I want to draw and to talk about drawing. I want to graduate and to write and to move on. I want it all, now, everything.

One step at the time I suppose. One story with each step, one drawing, one sentence, one word.

I've been working on this lately. It's been more play that work but it has been fun and productive in its own small way:

It's been restful and enjoyable but it's not my own stuff. It's not my talent and my work, just my joy. For the moment, all my joy.