once, when tripping over a rut in the road

I do not envy the person who does not feel life. I do not wish to be the one who's never been challenged or whose life has never been mined with social risks. To speak is to be diligent to the individuality. And to be whoever I am is to not be any- one else.

There is God's beauty in such self-awareness as this.

There is also such enormous confusion in daily checking that I am being true. I am always asking the best questions. I am trying not to faint from the hard answers. I am essentially doing the equivalent of tallying items on the clipboard of my moral inventory.

And I sometimes am afraid; I walk in the dark places, where each falling step, that rises loud in my ear but then fades into the past and away from me, sounds like my heart slamming into my chest. And I sometimes am scorned; my imperfect understanding of who I am and why is so often mistakenly cast alongside a perfect misunderstanding of who I am and why. And I sometimes am elated; the journey that has stolen me from a continent of sameness to the isle of individuality, a decades-long journey over the waves of uncertainty at not knowing anything further than this oceanic ripple, is a relief others will find in the use of drugs or alcohol or something else equally artificial. However — looming overhead like a black cloud that never sends forth its burden of rain — it is mostly about the loneliness: here is the fight that occupies nine-tenths of my life.

Listening to the silence now, regret is nowhere present.

This is my way to breathe, to continue to survive.

This is my fight, my do or perish.

This is all I am and nothing else: every adamant idea, every inconquerable dream.

This is how I insist on being loved, as my love is every bit a part of the quest.

This is my life.

J.