I haven't been this low in a long time. The semester's almost over and I am struggling to get out of bed each morning and begin to begin again. I'm tired of struggling and trying and failing and wrestling against despair. I want to wake up with all the rough edges of life straightened out, my day smoothed over me like a blanket, the corners tucked in nice and neat. Which is the exact opposite of everything lately. I'm treading water, treading water all the time, and I've lost feeling in my legs.
I don't want someone to tell me I can do it.
On some fundamental level, I know I can do it. I'm in law school, for crying out loud. It's not a matter of intelligence, for the most part. It's about blocking out the noise and taking step after weary step and staring your demons in the face, then shoving them aside because you don't have the time to see them reflected in your eyes. It's about knowing that your kingdoms are built of paper right now, but defending them as if they were made of gold. Keeping your head above the water and your tears behind your eyes.
I want someone to tell me that even if I fail, it won't mean the end of everything.
That I am more than the number on my paper or the ranking in my class.
That every failure is the first step to success.
That in five years none of these grades will matter.
That taking time to breathe won't kill me.
That I matter, and that I will still matter even if it all goes down in flames.
And the sad, ironic truth is if someone actually told me all that, I probably wouldn't believe them for a second. I've never been an average student in my life. I was setting the curve all through college, and I did it without reading for class half the time. At the risk of sounding like a douchebag, working towards my goals is a relatively new concept for me. As is burnout.
I'm tired.
I'm so fucking tired.
I know I've been neglecting this blog lately. I usually try not to write unless I'm in a #happybloggingmood. Like when I have art to talk about, or some new piece of writing in the works, or just something to passionately (and incoherently) rant about. When everything I touch turns to gold. When the words are welling up inside of me and they desperately need to flow out. And I haven't felt that way in what seems like forever.
I feel drained dry.
I am writing from an empty place.
It is new, and terrifying, and it feels pointless.
But every sentence I'm writing is just saying the same thing in different words. I exist, I exist, I exist. Over and over and over again. In this time, in this place, I exist and I speak my existence into the universe and I wait to hear the echo agree that I exist. I am at the end of myself, but I exist.
Maybe that's why we create at all, why we write and paint and sculpt and play our instruments into the silence. To say that we exist. To say that we are so many specks of dust on a rock spinning through space but we are here. In this time, in this place, we are here and we are speaking it out into the universe to hear it agree that we exist.
And maybe that's enough.
