Making Sense

    I come so close to wanting to turn this into a weepy, woe-is-me, pity party. Days like today. I want to write, words are ricocheting around inside my skull like essays on crack. Thoughts, emotions, pain, rolling around in a molten morass too thick to pour out into a comprehensible stream of consciousness. So I sit, staring at the black and white of my keyboard, typing and erasing, typing and erasing, trying to make sense of the mess. There is no sense, really. And I tell myself I should just stop trying, stop trying and move ahead. Move on. Get back to finding my own path, my own life, my own reality, my own true reality instead allowing myself the luxury of hoping, wishing, dreaming of living a life that seems meant for all others in the sphere of my little world. Once again, I think my path does not resemble that of other people, try as I might, I keep finding myself alone, in the shadows, forging my own way through the brambles that seem to grow up around my feet. It is okay, I am not afraid, it is a path I am quite familiar with. I wonder why I even try to walk other paths, paths of light and ease, companionship and trust. As delightful as those easy paths appear to be, they are not my reality, they are fantasy, smoke and mirrors, on them I am a stranger in a strange land. Always, I come back to my narrow, single track path, nearly too narrow for myself as I feel the tugging of tendrils of underbrush growing in the shade, definitely no room for two. I walk the narrow path, through the shadows, in the deep silence of solitude. So soundless the air is a pressure on my ear drums, and I can hear the blood coursing through my veins, hear my pulse pounding, and no voice is there to break the silence. I know I can find peace in the solitude, calm in the quiet, ease in the shadows, if I can only sort through the chaos inside my own head. So I write, or attempt to. I spill words across the page, meaningless, incomprehensible, blatherings of a fool. I pick through them as an archaeologist sifts through soil, hoping to find the smallest tidbits of truth, sanity, stability. I sort through my brain, knowing that somewhere within the cacophony is balance, peace, serenity. If I can only make sense of it all.