09.27.00 - 18:56:11

The scariest thing about the world - the absolute most toe-curlingly frightening thing about my world - the looming stormcloud, the threatening boogeyman whose shadow crosses my stoop and shades my emergence on those chill mornings when I awaken groggy and stumbling and feckless and filled with a nameless, existential dread that sows itself in my belly and casts a thin, appalling miasma over the idea of the world -

- is me.

What my head does to the world around me. Called on it, I'll say that I'm preparing for the worst - but whatever it is is never as bad as I think it is going to be.

I'm still not sure where my mind drags these seemingly insurmountable goblins from, these inexhaustable little spits of ragged, exhausting - whatever - that inspire me to do precisely nothing and thereby create worse situations. Normal things shouldn't require courage to face.

There is something inherently inelegant about this, particularly when I don't allow myself the easy illusions, and, in fact, prefer the challenging and complex to the smooth, flat-pat land I could otherwise sail.

I'm shy. I'm anxious. I'm incredibly, blindingly anxious. Sometimes, even the perceived rejection of someone I dislike will send me into someplace disturbingly bleak. I don't know why.

It isn't romantic.

It isn't artistic.

It isn't the sign of a sweet, tender soul -

- nor the sigil of genius.

I would like it to be any of these things, but at least I don't lie to myself about certain truths or motives. I'm too acutely aware of the self-aggrandizing that could result, too steeped in irony to ever allow myself to either 1) make and/or 2) believe one of those statements without something self-deprecatory and qualifying.

Whatever it isn't, it is, at any rate, absolutely debilitating. Well. Maybe not absolutely debilitating, but it sucks.