2.25

Have you ever felt like you bent back the fingernails of your emotional self? God knows I've reached out too fast for everything and my stubby child-like hands just smash up against things. Have you ever felt your soul-cuffs scraping the pavement with every step because life keeps buying your pants too large? Sometimes I feel like I'll never grow into myself. Have you ever been like this? I feel like I'm alone.

There are a hundred million people who have been in my position. There are a hundred million more living it right now, with me, and I could write it down exactly and throw it into the ocean, safe-corked in its own bottle, for the outgoing tide to tear away from me, and I know that whatever shore it found there would be someone there feeling the same accursed thing, waiting in the surf for the bottle to knock them in the shin. Even so, I still feel as though there's nobody out there who feels this same thing I do.

Have you ever felt like pushing your self out the door into the late summer night to smell the dying flowers in the hazy heat of our infant planet? Have you ever felt like asking who lives in the mud you've squished between your crusted toes? Have you ever cried for no reason when you're trying to fall asleep, too tired to succumb and too sad to admit that you know exactly why you're crying? Have you ever tried to hide a smile?

I think we all have.
I feel like I'm alone.


Maybe we are.


[This is autobiographical, of course. Almost everything is (to say otherwise would be to pretend you're stupider than you look). I'm exhausted, but I'm not depressed. I'm sad, but I'm not overwhelmed.]