all at sea

I sit down to write, and I can't.  The searing pain of words trapped within are unable to escape in one conducive thought. Words and phrases, things I've seen with my own two eyes are trapped. Thoughts and feelings held for mere moments are neatly ordered and mentally filed away until I see something that someone else has written and I can't help but scream in defeat: "That's what I was TRYING to say..."

It's the nature of the beast I suppose.

The truth is, I'm scared. I'm scared of not being good enough, not eloquent enough. Not able to connect the perfect metaphors and similes with that perfect flourish of irony, sarcasm or comedic relief when need be. I'm terrified of failure and my inability to be vulnerable in that moment. My failure is deeply rooted in the fact that my life experience is stunted - or limited at best. My problems and conundrums are my own, just like those are his or hers and so on and so forth but the general monotony of the day to day doesn't allow for the true inner reflection that I need in order to sift through the epic onslaught of these thoughts. I don't allow myself the time because when I do, they sit and fester until I'm 3/4th's of a bottle of wine in and that one song comes on and suddenly; I'm reduced to nothing but tears under the never ending black sky. Sometimes, it's because that darkness reflects what I feel within. Other times, it's the complete opposite. In the perspective of life - this is me, standing at a Craps table waiting for the inevitable "7 out!" and I'm cleared, debating on whether or not to start all over again.

This has happened more times than I'd actually care to admit over the course of the last week. Night after night as I crawled into a bed that wasn't mine - but not before carefully destroying the evidence in the form of wine bottles and mascara stained cheeks. "Erase yourself from this place, you were never here." I couldn't face it. I couldn't face hat no matter the week, no matter the day,  I am in fact unequivocally broken and adrift.

And that's okay. Or so, I'm told.

But it doesn't FEEL okay, ever, and though I know deep down that we are all broken and fumbling and have that moment at days end where we come face to face with ourselves, it's not comforting. If anything it makes me want to fight back because facing that true weight of who we are, who I AM, is not something that I'm prepared for.

Most days it feels like I'm a ship at sea and floating without an anchor. The anchor that grounds us and steadies everything. Sometimes, I'm still. For hours or days or if I'm lucky, weeks. Those are the best times. But at any given moment, I'm lost and out of control. How do I captain my own ship without an anchor? Or a compass? This life journey that I'm on feels never ending and as I carve out my own path on this map, I wonder how much longer I can maintain this speed before veering off course yet again.