Running From The Rainbow
I stand in the dismal, pounding rain
and turn my eyes from the rainbow.
Knowing that what I should do
is always going to be more important
than what I want to do.
Knowing that I don't have what it takes,
that I have never had what it takes
to do what I should do
or to do what I want to do.
It's like I exist on some neutral plane,
where life means one or the other
and I don't know how to participate.
It's like I was born to fail
at all that I should do,
at all that I want to do.
I am consumed by guilt and dread
over my failings in what I should do.
I am consumed by fear and longing
over my failings in what I want to do.
And what stands out the starkest
is the sense that I have to hide this,
because no one can know my struggles.
No matter how bad it gets,
it must remain my real-life secret,
shared only in online words.
I will not reach out to anyone,
because I'm not capable of it.
I will not ask for help,
because I'm not capable of it.
It seems that what I need now
is the ability not to care,
to be blank and unfeeling,
instead of giving in to the feeling
that my life is being drained from me.
After all, everyone has to work.
I should be able to do this job
with one hand tied behind my back,
if only I wasn't so burned out,
if only it didn't make me feel
like so much nothing inside.
I can't break down, I can't fall apart, I can't let anyone know
that my life is k*lling me inside.
I can't draw that much attention to myself.
I'm trapped in a box of my own design,
and I'm always my own worst enemy.
No one hurts me but me.
There's no one to blame for this but me.
All I have are questions without answers,
and I can't figure out how to do
the things I need to do to find the answers.
Fear and insecurity, the common denominators;
they paralyze me, crush me, smother me.
Every little positive step I do makes me feel
like I have done something new and exciting,
even little things that wouldn't mean much
to most people without my limitations.
The big positive steps feel so unreachable
like giant vines to grasp that are out of my reach.
I'm so afraid of so many things,
and I've always presented myself
as someone who's afraid of nothing.
I am a contradiction of myself;
no one in my real life would imagine
that such fears exist in me.
The facts are this:
There are things I need to do to survive.
I'm not doing them.
I'm not surviving.
I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop
and I don't even know what that means;
I just feel it.
Something is going to happen.
Something bad is going to happen.
This is the year that everything turns to sh*t.
This is the year I unravel. I feel it happening.
I fight it and fight it, but I feel it happening.
And I feel guilty and shameful and horrified
by this process of self-decline.
I'm sorry for being the person I am.
I'm sorry for not being stronger.
I'm sorry for failing.
I'm sorry for falling apart.
Who am I apologizing to? Myself, I guess.
I don't know how to live,
I don't know how to die,
I need to find the in between
before someone sees what's happening,
before someone sees too far inside me,
and I crumble from the shame of that.
I could keep writing this for hours,
but it's not going to help anything.
It's pointless to stand in the rain
and turn my eyes away from the rainbow.
But I love rainbows.
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