I am trying. That is not enough, though, is it? I am trying to will the dæmons out of me, command being but the whim of fancy. I am trying to stand firmly on shaky ground. I am trying to keep my head above ever rising water. I am trying to be the person I was destined to be, rather than the one I have become. I am trying to remain self-possessed, fearlessly facing enemies of my own invention, and those anonymous, impossible to face. I am trying to steady my hands, lest they strike in rage; to quieten my heart, lest it break in empathy. I am trying in my withdrawal not to push everyone away. In realising strength in surrender, I am trying not to yield. Cut adrift, denied both roots and destination, I am trying to find my way back to any place familiar.
Can you see that I am trying? Or does my defiance seem but obstinance? Why do you doubt me? Because I am not like you? Because my definitions, my precepts, my beliefs, are my own, not yours? Or is the mystery of me, the myth of me, but contrary to the contrivance of the pretence of you, the fiction of your presumption?
The perfect may be the enemy of the good, but good lies in mediocrity, as does bad, as do right and wrong. In my world of extremities, there are only denial and obsession, and the balance or imbalance between those extremes.
I am trying. I am trying. I am trying. I am fucking trying. I really am. It is hard to see, hard to believe, that one could try so hard and not succeed, but I am. I am. I am.
If you are only trying to forget, really, you either want or need to remember. Accept the memory. Swallow it, however distasteful, however painful. Pleasurable or unsavoury, all memories edify. Learn the lessons they teach.
Are you trying to quit? Turn around. Turn away. Do not turn back. Banish that which you would abandon forever from your life. Just as there are no white lies, no half truths, there are no half measures. Stop trying. Quit. Leave. Should anyone look for you, it will be too late; for you will have already gone.
Are you trying to be brave? You could be brilliant, but you are a coward. The past creates, nurtures, and sustains fear. There is no fear that is not founded in the past. There can be no fear without submission to the past. There will be no fear once free of the past. Your life will begin anew at that point, that moment, when resistance overcomes submission.
Do not leave claw marks in the things you must let go, trying to hold on. Just let go. The difference between hope and faith is as between night and day. Hope is wish, desire, longing, craving, anticipation. Faith is belief. Belief alone determining reality. Everything is impermanent and ever-changing. We suffer because we desire those things that are impermanent. Liberate yourself from suffering by eliminating the clinging to, the grasping of, the craving for that which is temporary, elusive.
Do not waste your time trying to explain who you are to people who believe they already know who you are. They know only who they would prefer you to be, in response to some need of their own, some void in themselves that you have been held captive to fill. Their commitment is to misunderstanding, misinterpretation, misrepresentation. Yours should be to unspoken inexorability, forswearing all allegiance fabricated, manoeuvred, negotiated in the vacuous name of loyalty, the very least of virtues.
Be as you appear; appear as you are.
Why begin anything if there is even the remotest possibility that you will not finish. You get no points for trying, but for finishing. You will miss every shot you fail to take. If you must choose between two evils, choose always the one yet to be tried. Risk is not risk without the commitment to carry it through.
Life does not give itself to one who tries to keep all of its advantages at once.
À la recherche de licornes. 