This is not what I’ve expected.

All of these things are masked.

Most days I don’t feel any different. I should be numb by now, and I should be disconnected. Why am I not? Why is everything still fresh and raw?

The wound has been made, and perhaps it’s my own fault for picking at it and never letting it heal. Maybe those wounds never heal. I certainly still feel the pains of the past, and if given enough attention, they can feel as fresh as the day they were inflicted.

Is it just me? Does everyone else heal and forever forget? Or is everyone simply better at deluding themselves and others to the damage they carry?

The pain reminds us we are alive….but after so long, why do I need a reminder?

Recently someone put it into one single word, and it gave me realization. I am unsettled. I fear I’ve always been unsettled. My soul is restless, and rarely in my (adult) life do I remember moments of normality and contentment.

Call it a bout of self-deprecation, but perhaps they’ve all been right to walk away. It has to be difficult watching my flightiness and desperation daily, my incessant struggle for that unobtainable moment of serenity…

I fight because I don’t know any better. I argue because I don’t understand letting go. So many small times I could have stopped breathing and allowed myself to be inside a moment, and all those moments could have been peaceful. I never learned to just “be” when with another. To accept life as what it is, boring and magnificent, and to just admit that I was exactly where I wanted to be, forever.

The markings on my body that symbolize struggle between light and dark, balance, equality…they aren’t there to be pretty. They are there as a constant reminder of my perpetual battle that rages in my soul.

One day, one side just might win.