Terrible Words

   Half of her shelf is filled with books. Half of her shelf is littered with words scrawled on scattered papers, words that she wrote down just to get them out. When they stay inside too long, she chokes on them. They make her lungs stutter for breath until she can take in the essence of ink on paper and find breath again.

   Words have been described as beautiful, crucial, and indispensable. Words have been described as necessary and incredible, words have been loved and cherished and clung to for dear life. But the truth that she sees is that words

     are terrible.

   Not terrible in the sense that the words themselves are evil or ghastly or horrendous, but in the sense that they are nightmarish. They pressure her to write them; they drive her to abandon other passions in surrender of them -

     of words.

   Words hold her captive while demanding to be released, contradicting and arguing all in the name of expression through her lips and fingers. Words are powerful, they emanate and shake with untold secrets of strength. Will they save this time, or destroy? Will they take her to joy or anger? They harness a power that cannot always be controlled, and that instills in her true fear. Why take the risk of pain when there is the alternative of not using the power at all? She could just stay silent on the sidelines, as she so often does, but sometimes, so often, the pressure

     is too much to resist.

   Half of her shelf is filled with books of clear plot and path and purpose, and the other half is cluttered with unfinished thoughts and indecipherable ideas. When she tries to bring the two halves of shelf together, she ends up with only a strange, enchanting mess that she can never quite set straight. She wants to know:

     Does that mean that the words are meant for her alone?

Or is she allowed to rearrange them in an attempt to share them half-understandably with the world?

   There is always the half chance that her words will inspire something beautiful, but paired with the other half chance that they will wreak havoc in their terror, is it worth it to take the risk? Where will this expression through lips and fingers take her,

     if anywhere at all?

   This she asks of the letter-masters, of the word-whisperers and the sentence-sewers: is there gratification and worth in a pursuit of taming even a small amount of this power? Is there even the slightest chance of victory for her? Will she drown in the power of the terrible words, or will their beauty shine forth, shine true, and bring her to a place of half goodness? Half of her shelf is filled with books, and the other half is filled with dangerous words, and it lies with her to decide

     on whether she can keep them to herself.

Falling Into Place

It is easy for her to imagine that with a simple future accomplishment; the reaching of a goal; everything will fall into place. Everything will be as she has always hoped it would be.

     Easy.

          Pleasurable.

               Perfect.

Even though she knows that's a lie.

There must come a point in the future where she realizes, fully and with life-altering surety, that nothing ever all falls into place. Some future achievement does not guarantee the safety and security of a happy future she has always dreamed of having. There will always be pain. There will always be hardship. There will always be more to strive for.

Yes, she realizes that now, but it is a matter of mind versus heart. She knows reality and what really is. But it is difficult to convince herself that the happiness proclaimed in Hollywood adaptations of life and the way everything falls into place once Protagonist's goal(s) has/have been achieved is not. A mentality that is thrown at her from every single angle since the very beginning stages of childhood, that once the movie comes to an end and Protagonist solves the problem, everything falls into place. Protagonist's life falls into order. Happiness is achieved. Love is fulfilled and free of negativity. Life

     is perfect.

          But no.

Struggle and pain are a part of the natural order. Life is a series of ups and downs, of joys and sorrows, of pleasures and pains, and there is no point somewhere in the middle where she will reach the top and stay there. That is not how it works. That is not real. She realizes this. She believes it. But there is a difference between realization, belief, and knowing.

     Realization implies stunned surprise.

          Belief implies faith, not necessarily based on what is obvious.

               Knowing carries her past realization and belief to awareness, surety, and acceptance.

That is where she is trying to go, and that is where she cannot seem to get. This hope she has that reality will come crashing down, revealed to be some cruel joke, passing the stage to the glamour and beauty of fiction and make-believe, is a hope unquenchable. A hope unbeatable. If only she could just stop hoping, she might be able to learn to know the truth of reality.

     She realizes it.

          She believes it.

               But said quite simply, it is something that she does not want to know.

Burgundies, Purples, and Plaids

She sometimes looks at her life as though through the eyes of another; as though it could belong to someone else. She notices patterns. Clothes of the same few shades and colours. Mostly blues, reds, burgundies, purples, plaids. What draws her to them? What part of her subconscious makes her choose so many of the same?

There is a story there, somewhere within her and buried in her past, that determines these patterns so camouflaged in her life. She wonders what parts of that story intertwine to form those patterns. She wonders when the patterns started, and what triggered them. She wonders how her own life choices were strung together, because she has fully lost track and does not expect to ever regain her way. There is an explanation out there somewhere, perhaps hidden under more layers than are possible to rifle through, but she does not know it. As far as the idea of knowing oneself,

     she is at a bit of a loss.

Why is a toasted blueberry bagel nostalgic of brightness, and a packed box the symbol of terror? Why is an airplane inducing of excitement; a train the promise of adventure; while the winding, narrow, bustling streets of a busy city are cause for worry?

     When did tea become comfort over chocolate?

          How did books become more company than Man?

When did 'friend' become a difficult, impossible word, while hate rose on wings of freedom to the height of dominance? How did patient and compassionate warp to reveal the cynicism

     and anger 

           beneath?

                What turned death to fascination and life to meaningless drawl?

But at the same time...when did nature become her epitome of inspiration? When was her perception of beauty altered to include so much more than before? When did she learn to appreciate all those little things; the little happenings, the little words; that pulled her through the overwhelming harshness of big things? How did blind faith change from an impossibility to her daily choice, and when did it become just a little

     easier?

She does not see any progression through all of her questions, and she does not see a pattern pointing toward any answers. But she sees the underlying repetition of routine, tied with comforts and terrors that she has unleashed upon herself, upon her own life. She sees her character and her personality emerging in a tangle of contradictions, and a string of patterns, that she cannot make sense of - nor should she try. If she is a walking, talking mass of contradictions, then she will express that through her pattern of living, regardless of whether or not she knows the reasoning behind it.

     And since when was she an element of reason?