Today, I feel distracted but aware. Stagnant and paralyzed by either thoughts or their absence. I suppose I am trying too hard to make things work, to make myself useful and good. I had a soul-enriching conversation the other day. I left the room elated, ready for any shadows lurking around the next corner. I felt proud. I hardly feel like that anymore. The default lately is listlessness. My willingness disappears before it even falls into the periphery. I asked someone the other day if we mistake melancholy for contentment. I knew they weren’t the same, but the somber, this suspension, seems not uncommon. I wake up to the emotion, faint in its appearance but apparent in its imposition, as it looks at me straight in the eye as though I must nurse it all day. I sweat the day’s efforts so I can marinate and soak up the dregs. The week wears me well. I reify the week’s emotional residue by emoting what this is I am experiencing, before I can allow myself to leave my desk.
Write anything. Write shit.
Write about the impermanence of worldly pleasures and pain. Write about new buildings, deforestation, and lavish getaways. Write about isolation. Write about squeezing yourself into a space that you don’t quite fit in. And how you oscillate, deciding how to perform, that you fold into yourself anyway.
I stare into boxes where I am shelved, but I don’t stare long. I nod at assumptions, without agreeing to them. I save the small talk and prepare for misunderstandings. I hear the familiar dial tone when we disconnect, and I still hear it when I hang up.
Through this evolution, we emulate ideas and identities, and become ourselves anyway. We wonder if we would be confronting the unconscious mind if we were to leave what isn’t serving us. We ask ourselves whether we are only allowing the good and not the whole in this lived experience. We shuffle through work and passions and misplace our values.
I am divided between seeking growth with caveats and authenticity and peace. Then I forget why I began in the first place. I remember where to find the exit door, yet my paralysis keeps me directionless.
We try to become and embody as much and as many as humanely as possible, and are reduced to feeling empty, frayed, and corroded.