i live two lives.

in one, i’m social and charismatic. i laugh with my whole mouth, i hug often, i dance in the street and don’t sleep enough. i take shots of vodka in colorful little glasses, i smile at you at the street, and i journal avoidantly because i lack the courage to be vulnerable. i spread my love far and wide, so that everyone gets a little. everyone gets a little.

in the other, i keep to myself more. i wear simple clothing, whatever i have, and strangers feel more like set pieces than anything. i have a few intimate relationships, and i love those people deeply. my thumbs retire from tapping rapidly on a little keyboard, my mind settles, and i recede from the past and the future, settling somewhere in the middle that still isn’t the present.

either way, i’m dissatisfied. either way i’m not connected enough

or so i believe, i’m really just not connected deeply enough

either way i’m not active enough

or so i believe, but my own product-ivity exhausts me

either way i want to be the other, or at least someone completely and entirely new.

to want neither and both at the same time is to want nothing at all, is to hope for nothing at all, is to live for and with and by nothing at all. i refuse to settle, i refuse to commit, i choose what’s better and find that everything gets worse anyway.

to hold on or to let go, to run or to catch, to return home or build one, this is the battle i have with myself. this is the position i’m stuck in, this is the story i have to tell, this is the essence of me.

subtle inner conflict, broken promises, shattered dreams i never really cared to build in the first place.

directionless, personless, boundless, i suppose

i could become anything.

but instead i’ve elected to become nothing, return to nothing and seek for everything

until i find my way back to the boy i used to be.