Consciousness

I guess I just try so hard to be whole, to glue pieces of other people and other places and other things on to the skin that only wants to rip itself to shreds. Because deep inside I'm still that fourteen year old girl that never died and she's still alive inside of me. Deep inside I'm still angry and I'm still hurting and sometimes I still hate myself. Because after the storm subsides it does get better but it doesn't get easier. There is still struggle and a post-war landscape is always left riddled with scars that conjure memories of bullet wounds. And as hard as I try to prove to myself that I am okay, that I am a different person, that I need to be whole to do the things I want to do... as hard as I try to cover that landscape of fallen trees and trenched ground that fourteen year old will always resurface. And I guess it's because we can never cut a part of ourselves out, remove a piece of our existence because then what would we be? We would be incomplete, so the removal of our past to feel whole again represents the paradoxical nature of human consciousness. That's what I hate about it all sometimes: the consciousness. The awareness that I am not like everyone else, the awareness that nothing is guaranteed and happiness often arrives with strings attached. It's that unwillingness to drift that gets me, the unwillingness to succumb to passivity. Struggle leaves scars but develops muscles and nurtures thoughts. And that's what I'm blessed with: thoughts. Consciousness. Awareness of imperfections that allow me to criticize drifting. And it's scary. It's a 3D movie in high definition with the volume cranked and it's skydiving without a parachute strapped to a lover and it's climbing a mountain without a cable safely fastened to the ground. It's free-falling and it's anxiety. I'm constantly scared, perpetually thinking of all the ways it could all crumble down around me. I'm constantly sad, the dull pulsation of uneasiness that comes with seeing the shadows when we're only meant to notice the sun. The ache and swelling of internal tears because I feel everything magnified, and I feel his sadness on top of it. And I feel the collective ache of humanity as we sway in our drunken dance of semi-consciousness. And I'm constantly angry, angry at the people who don't have to feel these things. But I'm happy, too. And this is the great paradox. Because my ability to feel anxiety and sadness and anger and compassion permit me to feel happiness to the same intensity. And without these emotions the world would be shades of grey and writing would be verbs and nouns and sentences and he would just be a pronoun. And stories would be narrative essays void of feeling and love would be comfortable. And maybe life isn't ever going to be comfortable but  nothing good ever is. "Nothing gold can stay" and the only permanence is derived of simply comfortable things. Comfortable things with no definitive endings but an infinity of comfort is nothing compared to a brief and intense burst of feeling, nebula to supernova a fleeting vision of stardust and galaxies. 

All I know is things will work out.

We gather scars and scars fade and we hurt again and this cycle continues and at the end of it the supernova remnants will illustrate our story and spell out the beautiful psychosis that was our lives.