Becoming New

I'm a bad-weather writer.
It seems as if words will only spill from my heart when I feel some pain, or sadness, or loneliness. Makes for a depressing read, I know. It's hard to look happy when you're always sad. Something I've learned over my few years is that the more I do for myself the sadder I become, just like the longer I think about the things that I don't have, the more what I do have becomes ugly to my heart. Have you ever thought that, or is it just me?
I'm battling a strange emotion tonight--that of loss and disappointment so deep that I hardly know what to do with myself. I've had this feeling a few times before, but that doesn't make it any easier. There's a reason some of the most beautiful poetry written is about loss and loneliness--it just melds so easily in with the crashing of waves and dark nights, with empty beds and candlelight. Last year this time I was battling with losing my childhood home and the birthplace of everything good in me. Last spring marked a year since my "first love," in reality very foolish, buried a chunk of my heart in the warming earth, and this year, well, that's a story for another time.
I just can't talk about it now.
I go between phases of writing bad poetry that would make a proper English teacher cringe, to vomiting out raw emotions through my fingertips. And through it all I'm not quite sure I really know how to live with myself anymore. I'm not sure I've ever really dealt with any of my pain or my broken dreams... It's more like I've folded them all neatly and tucked them away in a box in the top of my closet, labeled warning: open at your own risk. So they stay there, and I try to forget them, but they never really ever go away. I can't burn them up, I can't send them away, and I can't ever completely forget them. I think the part that bothers me the most is that no one can have me without having all my boxes come along too.
I wish life wasn't this way. But I probably wouldn't be the person I am today without all those boxes hidden away. I wouldn't have the wisdom that comes with making mistakes, and I wouldn't have the marks that set my life apart from yours. Just because my world is different than yours doesn't mean that you are better than me, or I better than you. We were all born for a different purpose, and tonight I'm trying to find comfort in the fact that maybe I couldn't fulfill my purpose without all these scars that shape my heart and mold my path. Maybe, just maybe, it's just simply the process burning away the layers of dross to reveal that beautiful, pure gold that every man wishes he had--becoming something new and utterly precious with every heartache and every pang.

Ensnaring Apathy

I never in all my life thought that I'd feel this alone--this lonely. It's like I have no purpose, no plans, no future, no prospects. I suppose if I'm honest these are just feelings talking and in reality they're rubbish, but still, they're here, inside my heart. I can't even begin to describe the way it eats at my heart and mind until I realize that my hands are trembling and my stomach is sick even while my face is stoic and I try to keep myself from crying. Some people say it's just the 20s stage and that everyone goes through it, but instead of bringing me comfort that knowledge just makes me feel more and more like I'm drowning--alone. And not just drowning, but drowning in water that is so cold that it has paralyzed me to the point that I can no longer struggle, but just let it come.
Without hope.
I wish I didn't have these feelings, these emotions.
I wish that I could wake up with a still heart instead of feeling like I'm missing something somewhere--someone. In this house alone so many days I rush around doing things that seem so important to my tired mind all the while knowing deep inside that nothing I do really makes any difference at all.
Instead of enjoying a cup of coffee in the cool fall air I find myself chugging a cup of coffee gone cold and I stay inside the house tinkering with things that don't matter, or searching for diy projects on Pinterest that I know deep down I really have no intention of doing. I spend too much time curling my hair or planning my outfit when I know that I'm not going to leave the house. I look at my face in the mirror and find myself despairing over a little acne or a few scars. I look at an unread book that is begging to be read but instead I flit around the house doing nothing that nourishes my soul.
What is this strange apathy that has crept into my heart and into the deepest recesses of my mind? My ability to retain knowledge or the memory of what happened last week is slipping away, and I feel it. I'm not being stretched. I'm not learning. I'm not writing. I'm not working. I'm not reading.
All I am is fading.
It's no wonder I feel so empty.
I feel so tired, and yet--I have no energy or ambition to do anything.
Even as I write these words my eyes are struggling to keep themselves open and my once-hot cup of Earl Grey tea is poised lukewarm in my hand.
What can I do to break this cycle? There must be a way--there must.

Wish No More for Forgetfulness

I think I've forgotten what it is to live.
Today I put away my laptop, phone, and iPod and I sat outside in the cool breeze. It's not often anymore that I let that silence wash over me. Somehow it just drags up all my insecurities, all my doubts, and all the memories I wish so deeply to forget. But I think that maybe I've forgotten too much. I've read countless times that you should forget the pain but remember the lesson. How is it that I can never seem to separate the two? Actions are never as simple as words make them out to be, but somehow, in my trying so hard to forget, I have also forgotten the beautiful, and the memories that once gave me strength and hope have slipped away into the darkness of a blank mind. And that is where I find myself now--with a mind unwilling to trust and a heart unwilling to let myself love.