You can feel progress, movement, momentum.
It is hard to generate, but it is not hard to feel.
You can feel its absence too.
The subtle giving up
Working on escape routes rather than a way forward
It is when you stop building things and instead settle for crumbling structures and unswept corners
It’s when you feel yourself go fallow with disuse
The burnout of a low-grade heartburn
The mess that stares at you, surrounding your little world
You’re not quite wrecked, but the all the fender benders make it hard to move
And it is just so loud, but with none of the sounds you want to hear
It is okay to feel the sadness of lingering disappointment
It is alright to feel yourself as a piece of paper getting balled up and tossed aside
You want to go for a walk, but there really isn’t anywhere you want to go
So, you end up traveling in circles, ever smaller and less consequential
You feel like a stuck key on a keyboard, always catching just as it is trying to spring back up
And every once in a while, you aren’t sure you are going to come back up at all, dragging a single letter across the page until it expands to fill that page and many others
I am trying to whittle around a particularly difficult knot, coming at it from every angle but still with not enough force to get the sucker to budge
I know that it will be smooth eventually, once I get past this knot, but that doesn’t make the knife go any faster
You want to go on a picnic, but when you set up your blanket on the grass it always just looks like you’re having a haphazard yard sale
Nothing feels intentional or put together, just a set of random items that you hope add up to a meal
You’re struggles do not wait, one at a time, like a line for the water fountain in grade school
They come all at once, careening into one another, like a group of bullies in the parking lot of a high school football game. They have selected who they are going after and you only now just realize how many of them there truly are.
You know that there are better days ahead because you don’t have to think too far back to conjure them. But you can’t live your life in reverse, traveling backwards through the openings of what you used to want.
For anyone who is sad right now, who needs to sit still and silent to put things right in your head, for anyone who is so equally between point A and B that neither are visible, I’m here too. And I can honestly say I’m glad that you found me. I feel a little less alone now.