Tug

I remember a time when I used to write. A time when I would jot down any idea through words or quick scribbled drawings, and put them all in a box or folder I kept with the proud intention of one day, when I was on my way, taking them out and sorting through them all to make more ideas. Every idea, no matter how absurd or poorly worded or sketched was kept and treasured. In those days I cared. I believed, and knew with all my heart what my true calling was and I was excited for it. I just KNEW I could do it, because out of every small obsession and passion in my life this was the one, my creative motif, that has stuck and never left me. Like a stray cat that no matter the neglect you show it, or beat or chase away, it is always there, somewhere, waiting again for the day for you to care and love it again because that time changed it's life.

As the years have gone on, so have the contributions to my tattered accordion folder of almost every single catchable idea I've had since I started writing them down. But the yellowing pages of dream worlds past and heroes and stories of love and hope, of devastation and monsters and fantasy outnumber the fresh but crinkled notes of my yesterdays. It seems like my life is shrinking. My tears flood my passion for everything I enjoy away. I don't feel like it serves a purpose. It seems like my only audience is myself and I don't deserve it. Not anymore. Not after how I've neglected it.

And still I feel it. I feel this tug on my heart that I have a purpose. That all of this struggle and emotional armageddon has landblasted the rocky foundation for me to build the world I want for myself upon. This tugs at my soul. It pulls like a child wanting to go to the park and ride their dirty bicycle under the warm sun and singing birds would tug at your sleeve as you ready for work. I also remember the day when I tugged on my imagination in this way, coaxing it to come play with me.

And alone i sit in a cold condo typing slowly with saddened fingers on a laptop that like everything else I seem to own, is slowly and visibly breaking down. The people closest to me, including my therapist tell that my own arch enemy is myself. I am nemesis to my own happiness. I take each setback and failure and wave a filthy white flag, and almost always before I've even fought back. The red eyes of my nemesis stare down on my submissive stooped shoulders with confidence and hatred, Hatred for the world in which it can't affect and lust for the pain it can so easily afflict upon me.

So pity has been the water for my soul. It makes me feel like people care about me. When I am down, when I am at my most desperate and weak do people reach out. Then do they acknowledge me and my company. Pep talks keep me company, but it's a friend wearing the clothing of my disappointments, the rude neighbor who drives the car you sold him because you couldn't afford the payments. 

So alone I sit. Where do i find the strength to tug at the sleeve of everything I know I can be? What do I have to do? Never mind what I have to do, how?! How the fuck do I do it? 

All I've ever wanted is to be in love with a woman so madly in love with me we could stop the expansion of space and break the reaches of time with only a look into each others eyes and touch of our lips. All I've ever wanted was to have the time and freedom and success to turn my ideas into reality and show it to people, share it with them. To watch an audience member look to his girlfriend through the darkness of a theatre, slouching against his shoulder and wrapped around the arm that holds her and kiss her tear streaked cheek. I want to take people places, make them feel things and maybe awaken something inside them dying like it is with me. To have someone buy my art and find something in it to relate to or appreciate.

I want to be happy. I want to feel real hope, a sign that things will turn around if I just push a little harder. I want to keep my faith in my god and my spirituality because it has kept me alive when there was nothing in my mind else to live for. I want to share this abundance of love inside me, a love this world is parched for, with the people in my life, the world around me and leave something behind. I want to have legacy greater than one of unkept potential and wish-i-did memories. For today, I just want to stop crying, and hold someone that I know is out there for me close to my heart and feel my pain dissipate from her loving and healing touch for me, and fill her with my love, and for that moment however long or fleeting stop the world so I can catch my breath.