To Be Vulnerable

She tends to second-guess herself. In everything. Her last thoughts were of the promise of adventures, and now she wonders if that was safe. She last promised to take the risks that breathed life into her bones, but now she wonders if those risks aren't what killed her in the first place.

Second-, third-, and fourth-guesses.

The numbers keep 

Rising.

What if? What if? What if? There is nervous, and there is anxious, and she is the latter because the two mean very different things. Anxiety is a constant companion, and when she places her hand under her throat to ward off the escalating pulse, she shows a little piece of it to the world. She is small. She is lost. She is vulnerable.

Is that not the essence of adventure?

                                             Or rather risk?

                                                         But are they not one and the same?

More guesses, and re-guesses, so twisted and turbulent in a brain that never sleeps that she begins to forget which ones are real and which ones are imagined. The emotions inspired by the what ifs become reality, and then she cannot remember how she truly feels about the present. She is too caught up in the possibility.

Why can she not understand herself? Because she has confused possibility with reality and the emotions are too vastly different and intertwining to find the beginning or the end.The past haunts her, the future terrifies her, and she clings to those feelings too strongly. That is how they become her twisting, unidentifiable present. That is why she does not know how she feels about the adventures at hand.

     She cannot know.

There is too much to sort through, too much to toss, and she cannot decide what to keep and what to throw away. She is a walking,
                                         talking,
                                             tripping,
                                                   falling,
                                                       crying,
                                                           screaming
                                                                       mess;
of what ifs? and how comes? and why nows?

And no one can sort her out, because she cannot sort herself.

It is not a job for anyone else, other than her and the Voices in her head. There is a guiding Voice, somewhere,

                             there

and then it's gone for a few days longer.

More of a whisper than anything; it's a struggle to catch it for any one moment at a time. There are circumstances, environmental and mental, that must be met. But most of all she must choose to hear the Guiding Voice.

             And all too often she does not.

She is learning to. There is no overwhelming despair here to keep her under. But that despair bubbles beneath the surface, trembling and twitching for her attention. The past begs her to remember it. The future hollers at her to succumb to it. The present must become her resistance

                                                                                                                     her tether

                                                                                                                               to deny it.

She knows this. She believes it. And that is her first step

                                                                             towards adventure.