I Would Rather Be In Bed

Sometimes I stumble.

It’s a major side effect of being the very flawed human I happen to be. They don’t give you a handout at birth. Not one specifically designed to you, anyways. The one that says you’re going to go through some shit. You’re going to walk so far into a swamp you’re going to feel stuck. Cemented in to the point you’ll never be able to extract yourself.

Then, somewhere along the way, someone will hand you a mallet and a chisel and you’ll slowly start chipping away at the cement cased around you. Freeing your chest so you can breathe again is your first big milestone. It’s the first moment you pause and cry and celebrate the progress you’ve made. The problem is, sometimes you think you’re done, and you stop for a while.

Until you realize you’re not moving anywhere. You’re still staying in the same spot. So you pick up your mallet and chisel and you start chipping away at your legs. Once they’re free you crawl out of the hole you’ve dug for yourself and you shake all the years of dirt and grime off and you walk again.

Once you learn to walk again, you think, you really think you’ll never stumble again. How could you after everything you’ve learned? All the quagmire you’ve waded through? All the dark you’ve finally shined some light into? No, your legs are strong and you’re walking along without a problem.

Then.

You stumble.

That fall is so much faster than you ever think it’s going to be.

The fall into that hurricane is something you never see coming.

I look at you and I wonder how, with all the warmth inside of me, all this armor I’ve donned, and all these mountains I’ve climbed, how am I possibly falling into this pit again?

It takes me a day, a few days, maybe a week or so to remember this is not where I want to be, this is not who I am anymore. There is a goddess inside of me that I broke down and shoved away in favor of all of this insecurity and fear. Don’t worry. I’ll find her and let her out again. Just give me a minute. I wish I could close all the doors inside my head that I close her behind some days.

I feel the loose screws rattling around up there, the doors that creak and rattle in my mind that won’t stay closed and leave me places to hide and let the dark things out. I’ve tried to shut them. I’ve tried to seal everything up tight. Still, it just doesn’t go all the way back together.

Looking at you, as the ghosts creep around up there, I know you deserve the perfect girl you keep thinking I am. The one who isn’t going to stumble, the one who doesn’t let the darkness out because she’s strong enough to keep the doors closed and the night locked away. You deserve the one with endless patience and fears at bay.

You deserve all those things.

But for each time I’ve stumbled, you haven’t let me fall…

So I hope, I hope, you never realize how very undeserving of you I am.