Frigid night
A certain star
Seems to flutter
Unnaturally bright
Shadows grow late
In the deepening dark
Are becoming too black
As if solid, living, lying in wait
Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a time, and a place where great change is about to take place, and this everyday world that I move around in is soon going to be different forever. Now, I begin to fear that one of two things will happen. I fear that it is my country's citizens that will be slaughtered in the streets as they as blasted into a thin vaporous haze; it will be my country that will be seen as the enemy of freedom on earth for its actions against others and its blatant abuses and disregard of others; that change will come, but it will not be the change toward peace and unity that I envisioned. -Or- I fear that this country will go on as it has been, taking charge where it feels it should, when it feels it should, regardless of anything else; I fear our continued centrism, ignorance and hedonistic gluttony. I fear that what is bad about my country will spread, and what is good will shrink. Either way, I worry that as a nation, there will be no massive movement toward peace and restoration. I am afraid; the president has created in me what he set out to. Yet despite all of this; I hope. I hope, if for nothing else, that the next four years will go by lightning fast, as if I had dreamed them and suddenly wake up to something brighter than this.
I find myself clinging to my home and those things in my life that I love with a strange ferocity.
My mother's health keeps sliding down. It gets harder to be positive about anything around her; she seems like she's in nearly constant pain. I really want to just be able to fucking do something more to help her; I've never felt so helpless about anything in my life. I feel like a spectator, watching the sort of thing you'd normally turn your eyes away from, yet I keep trying to charge in to help, knowing that no matter what I do, it'll make no difference. My only consolation is that I know, to her, I matter. But to myself, watching my actions from some disembodied perch above me, I look like a fool who knows too little about what it means to live in this world, really live, really carve out a life with a few cents in your pocket and no one to do the thinking for you.
In the last couple of years, I've learned more about the world than I ever thought I could, and with a speed that is astounding. To this academic girl who thought life was created through the study of information and the acquisition of knowledge, reality is both much simpler and much more fucking subtle than my university-trained brain could've ever wrapped around.
Does this make any sense? These are the words that I've longed to say to someone now for years, and reading them now, I get it. I've just crashed into the meaning of life, and it's more gritty and common and comprehensible than I would've imaged.
Maybe I'm just young, and trying to find my way.
At work, I've learned what it's like to know people, and let them know me. I've realized that my old desire to seem "mysterious" really just makes me look like a bitch, and while I'm not looking to toss all my eggs in one basket all the time, I've realized that my old ways were just a means to hide myself for fear of being hurt, or scrutinized, for having the flaws that all of us have: average body image, nervousness in large groups of strangers, being a bit unsure of my place in the world.
I've learned that it's okay to sweat, it's alright if my hair looks a bit windblown or disheveled, and who cares if I've got a mark on my khakis where my uncapped pen cleaved an uneven arc through the air as it tumbled to the floor. I've learned to remove the pole from my ass.
A point: I've lived "harder," poorer, and occasionally, sadder than I ever have. Yet, overall, I feel strangely like I'm really getting to the heart of who I am even though life quite literally is kicking the ever-loving shit out of me.
Another point of all of this is: thank you. I've been poking about this website for awhile now, off and on, but now I see it with the fresh eyes of an actual noder and participant. While I'm still new and trying to figure things out, I am very thankful for this site and it's collection of poets, prose writers, factual noding geniuses, and those of you cool enough to master these three and more. I'm grateful to those of you who have sent me messages of encouragement and gratitude for what I've done. There's something in me that needs this place. In places like this, with people like those here, sometimes you feel like you can't ever give enough back.