2 April 2020

Spring has typically been a busy season for me. Going back to high school, spring was the time for UIL academic competitions, and one - act plays; so I was suddenly flooded with extra-curricular activities.

or is that a story I'm telling myself, to hide a more essential truth?

I like to stay busy. I don't like to sit around, held in a waiting pattern. I like to juggle multiple projects, multiple lives even...

Yet, in all of the hustle, it's easy for me to minimize reaching out to friends. It's like I'm taking the friendship for granted - that it will always be there, even after years of neglect. This idea has not held up with all friendships, even the ones I thought were deep. Most of the time, it was because I gave up on the effort required to keep the long distance communications going.

It's led to a waterfall of regrets, I think. Missed opportunities piling up, people becoming strangers as we trudge our separate paths...

I want to invite people into my life, and yet I'm afraid that I can only offer bread and water; when they silently wish for sweet delicacies and fine port. (Okay, I'm trying to play at being poetic, I guess)

Aside from a fear of dwindling friendships, I harbor a fear built on low self-worth: What can I offer, really? How can I entertain? How can I NOT be an imposition?

Have I destroyed the faith and trust of others through a series of bungling missteps and false maneuvers?

I don't think I have, yet I still doubt.

I feel such shame, as I've degraded, over the years. I feel that all the pressure to succeed and my inability to meet those expectations has left me a broken man, with no hope for tender care. I can not provide for my aging parents; and I can not fathom who would still care for me.

It's a dark pit of despair, with rats in the shadows nipping upon my flesh, even though it be decayed and depraved. (ok, poetic again?)

I never got comfortable with the idea of a telephone. I'm only marginally comfortable with the internet. Still, it feels like the world has gotten too big and too divided to have any comfort in walking to the neighbors' houses. I wish it was a small town, again. I wish there weren't so many negative boogeymen broadcast through our media.

Ok, I think I'm tired again.