exhale

Hope and hopelessness.  Two feelings I find myself lingering in quite often, occasionally mere moments apart.  The world, and my life in it, provide the ammunition.  My head and heart the double barreled shotgun.  Swimming in emotions cold and hard, and dizzying and wild that I'm never quite sure where I am half the time.  I really don't know what to make of myself.  I've tried to lead a good life.  I've tried to connect on a level comparable to those around me.  I know what it's like to be human.  To feel.  To fail.  To love.  To hurt.  To smile at life and turn the other cheek.  But there's a depth to my well that sometimes sweeps me away to a whole other dimension.  It's lonely there, and I spend a lot of time in its cool depths.  Occasionally I'm able to bring myself out.  More often, it's someone else who does it for me, without them realizing it.  But I do.  

To one day be able to connect with such intimacy that I can feel true contact with another person, mind, body and soul is a blessing I fear I'll probably never achieve.  I've lowered standards, played pretend, tried to be like the other kids but it's never been truly enough.  I'm on an island and they're only visiting.  I can see it in the faces of family and friends.  A sort of knowing sadness that I'm as close to a lost cause as they've ever known.  Missing some important piece of the puzzle that will probably never be found...or if found, I won't know what to do with it.  

Like a drug that loses it potency over time, limiting the duration and intensity of the high, I find myself gradually recoiling in apathy.  Part bitterness, part sheer frustration...and part acceptance.  Kind words do not help.  Promises of better days ahead fall on deaf ears.  This old dog doesn't want to learn any more new tricks.  

I'm tired.