The When and Where of It All.

Lately I've been ruminating on being basically an imprint.  Not exactly a lasting effect, but an impression.  I've also been thinking about the past; about what it means to be a ghost.

I've done it before, you see.  I've been a ghost in my own life. I've been forgotten, forgiven, lost.  I've been the one hidden against the wall, the one carefully tucked into herself, the one contrived.  The one who hides behind an armor forged of intellect, sarcasm, and bravado.

Ultimately, I'm the one who pretends.

And it's been hard, here, to not retreat.  I'm struggling.  I have been struggling.

I can't pull the happy out, I can't pretend.  I can't fake it, I can't triumph, I can't make believe that I am at all.  Here, I can't find it in me to be a person I'm not.  Some days, I can barely find it in me to be a person that I am...  I find that I tip-toe around openness and dance around honesty.  I descend into the person that I once was in favor of the person that I could be.

It's like being back in high school... but worse.

Because I'm old enough now, and wise enough, to know that it's all on me.

It is no secret that I've had my fair share of struggles over time.  But time 'is always time and place is always and only place'... it goes on, naturally.  My great fear in life is to not live, to not be engaged in the time and place when and where I am; it is a fear that constantly sneaks up on me, rattles me, jolts me into aggression.  It's circling me now, this fear, this panic that I'm sitting way too many out.  That I'm fading.

And so of course, I retreat to the page, to the letters and language that make the most sense to me.  I retreat to the comfort of a clean white background, and a bristling black cursor.

So much for when and where.