It's Pretty Deep

Some days there’s a struggle going

on the deepest parts of my brain

between acceptance and denial

of what I have become and

how I got there.

Most of the struggles involve

run-on sentences and essay-like

tomes of nonsense, all cramming

into a clown car of thought, all

trying to be the one to yell, “First” and toot a horn.

It’s self important, it’s self-pity,

it’s  another day spent in personally

decreed silence because I don’t want to

talk to anyone but desperately want to

with someone special.

I make myself sick with worry about

being alone, being rejected, unaccepted,

shunned, avoided, demonized, hated, feared,

being made a fool of, being a fool,

consumed with anxiety and stillness.

Distracted by it, constantly taunted by

couples, canoodling, kissing, sharing, loving,

laughing, fighting, swearing, looking at each

other in that way that says they know everything

about each other and the comfort they take in it.

I’m ill with the obsessions over my seemingly

self imposed loneliness, because of anxiety,

depression and mediocre self confidence, I think

it’s all my fault, I’m some hideous monster of a guy

undeserving of any love from a gal.  It’s not true. It’s not true?

The burns suffered are deep, through the meat,

into the bone, charred, and I’m not sure when it’ll

heal, if it will heal, can it heal, who would want me if

it didn’t heal, how does it heal, why hasn’t it healed yet,

what’s taking so long, what’s taking so long, what’s taking so long…

The struggle goes on and on, over and over,

in sweeping cycles, like seasons, a season where

one’s fancy turns to spring, romance, love, and

something new, something special and deserving

of adoration and to be cherished.  Then dashed by winter.

Anxiety, depression, has an effect,

It’s like crushing a beautiful flower in the

palm of your hand. Something so lovely and tender,

yet you can’t stop, can’t control,  your hand from smashing it,

and smearing it on the walls.

You wonder if you deserved such a beautiful thing

and then you worry that you’ll never have such a beautiful thing

again, so you do silly or stupid things to try and find it again, but you can’t

find it, so you stop looking and hope the beauty will find

you, but that isn’t working, taking too long, too isolating, too terrifying…

And then, will you just smash it again, in your hand

as you are lost in the beauty of it? Is that what will happen,

is that the pattern? Is there any escape from the loop de loop

of the clown car of thought.  

How does it work? What does it take?

I’m not sure what it takes in this world, to

be deserving of love, to be loved, to have

someone there, waiting just to hear about how

your day was and you can’t wait to hear about

their day.  To look in your eyes and see the best of themselves.

It seems so simple and yet so impossible.

Like running under a starry sky, it seems like

it would be easy to grab the stars in your hands

and scoop them from the air,

but it’s impossible.

The uncertainty of the impossible, or

possible, has been wearing me down,

the edges are rougher with the shaving,

the patience is thinner, the time is

shorter. But it’s deep down there.