The story I am writing has gotten stuck on a comma. I am trapped in a run-on sentence, stuttering and sputtering and shuddering to think that this scene will never end.
Every morning I face the monotony of waking up in the same bed, in the same apartment, to do the same things as I go to my same job day after day. I splurge on an iced coffee today, but I can’t do that every day or else it will bleed into the tedium just like everything else. I am watching myself fade away every day I step up to the mirror, every time I wash my face I am slowly flushing my self down the drain.
But did I trap myself? Is the key in door?
Did I do this? Did I choose this?
If I am the maker of my own destiny, if I am the god I was always searching for, then why can’t I remake the world in my own image? If I have to fake it until I am brave enough to take it, then surely by now I would have found the exit and gotten off this ride.
I pushed myself into a hall of mirrors, and each one showed me a version of myself that I forgot about. But when I come face to face with the past, all I feel is forgiveness. I see a person who did the best she could, who was stuck just as I am now, who clawed her way out.
Maybe I am choosing to be here, to ruminate, to worship my sorrow. It’s safer to be trapped in my own head than to go out there looking for joy. A heart cannot be broken if it’s already in pieces.
You have to let things be as they are. You have to be as you are.
No amount of reflection or analysis will reinvent you. The flaws are the same, the curse is the curse. But the spell you cast is shaping you into something you’re not.
How can you be who you are if you are determined to see yourself as you’re not?
How is it that we are damned to memory but our past is fated to mutate? Is it so easy to forget? Is it so hard to remember?
I thought I had met myself, that I knew myself, but it’s clear to me now that every self I meet will be remade in the image of someone else. I am trying so hard to be anyone but myself that I am walking in the shoes of other people even as I look in the mirror. I cannot shed this weight that I laid across my back. I cannot shake the devil off my shoulders because He sounds like me.
I stare at my reflection from a dozen different angles, hoping that this time it will speak to me. If I capture it in a moment of weakness, of worthlessness, of wealthiness, maybe I can coax it out of hiding.
Am I hiding from mirrors or am I hiding from god?
Isn’t that the same thing?
I make myself and remake myself and remix myself until I turn sour. There’s a rotten taste in my mouth, but I feel like I’ve imagined it. Can you study something for so long that it ceases to exist? Am I just another word in the dictionary? Am I allowed to start over? Even if I would, how could I start again?
I trapped myself a long time ago, hoping that if I was contained, I would stop the hurt. Can I protect everyone I’ve ever loved if I am no longer a person? If I shrink myself will my punches hurt less? Will my poison be less potent? Will my hurricanes dissolve on the shore?
Do I even have the right to call myself a storm? Am I just a drizzle that caused someone to short-circuit on their darkest day? Was it all a lie I told myself to feel more powerful?
I know that all I have to do is stand up. The ocean I’m drowning in is a pond, a puddle, a sink, and I am bigger than my brain. But some days it is so hard to imagine myself as anything other than a flea. I am a parasite feeding on my own mind, a cockroach who refuses to succumb, and I wonder if there is another way to live.
It’s hard due to how life can be, being where we are either by winging it or having unexpected experiences happen to us. We ponder what to do to escape this monotony. Aside from letting things be as they are, if we want to achieve something, we have to think of what to do and if it’s possible.