Thinking

This is me, this is you, this is all of us, and I can never do justice this way.

Often wondering if I end up in one way or another, I try to measure all that I almost am - from the words I omit to the thoughts I damn from evolving into action, into consequence. And I hope I'm recording things right, and being right, but I can never be so sure. I know that if I force myself into knowing my limits and boxes and talkative expectations that I will soon lose my restraint and self-control, my sanity - opposing what, I do not know - but this is somewhat untrue, because I am not a girl in a book, a boy in a movie, a stereotype alone, and I only sometimes want to "break free." (Note: You don't have to relate.) I am my own being, no matter what tests and certificates declare, and I am like you. No matter who you are. I am fiction, I am real, I am a person. I can contradict, I can submit. And I hope I am more than a list of characteristics offered on paper.

I am not different, but I believe even the most shallow-sounding people are complex and deep in ways we can't see.

If my perception is wrong, I would want to know why. Is my perception invalid? Erroneous in opinion... or fact? But what is perception?

I can touch worlds in me, and others too, but I know where I am within.

I am not a hedonist and I trust my thinking more than my feeling. I know the world suffers and that it screams although I may not hear it in my sleep. I know you suffer and that curves of teeth and gums don't always translate into happiness. I know how to keep quiet, and how to twist silence (borrow into them, squeeze them out of their bones), but I will never know why someone looks at me unless I pry into their space and ask. "Why are you looking at me?" bears a strong difference from "Why do we suffer?" and "Why do we want to please?", but I can't gracefully bend my questions into the vastness of a blank document, into the aligned structure of a paragraph. I can't eloquently caress my feelings, the knitting together of my brows, into a breath of self-expression. I am stuck, yet off-kilter, and I may as well be living with life like this.

But I don't want to live with life. I want to live life. I want to live in it, make it mine, trust these compounds, break them maybe, and defy death thinking I can. Knowing I can. Trusting myself to jump when I feel like I am ready.

I fear jumping, but I do not fear heights.