Once Brazen and Electric

I learned the hard way that just taking the requisite pills isn't enough to fix me.

That darkness lurks around every bend; waiting; ready; hungry.

My struggle isn't something that I can simply medicate away. 

And mortality looms... finality teases and taunts and tortures me.

And I'm forced to move forward.  To keep breathing.  To keep ... subsisting... to continue on into the unknown, and to do so exposed, vulnerable, frightened.

What choices are there, really?

Agreements made in desperation, promises signed in need--now come to collect.  Would that I could simply give them a pound of flesh!  How gladly I'd part with that.  But it isn't something so trivial as flesh they want.

It's my soul they're after.  My life-that-might-have-been.  My dreams they dismantle and repossess. 

And I'm forced to move forward.  I keep breathing, despite.  I keep functioning, an automaton, a shell.

I wake up every day.  I find some joy, some warmth, some laughs and some love.  A great deal of love, for which I am continually grateful and constantly humbled.

And escape is ever on my mind.  In my bones.  My pulse.

Escape.  Not solutions.  Because solutions seem to me at this point, as futile and far-fetched as the winning ticket in a lottery.  Solutions are for other people--and look how well they're managing! 

But me?  I want out.  Away.  New Beginnings.  Fresh, clean, unburdened. 

I guess I want to hope again.  To dream without fear of watching those dreams torn down before my eyes.  Dismantled piecemeal, to give way to expenses and banal realities and crushing responsibilities.

I want to be brazen and electric again-- if ever I was... surprising and spontaneous and bold.

Wellness seems such a far way off at this point.  And I'm already so thoroughly exhausted and disillusioned by this journey.

Wellness.

Wholeness.