Perplexing Paradox

Maybe it’s the dissonance between my adult brain and my child heart. Perhaps it’s a defense mechanism meant to protect me from hurt or disappointment. It’s possibly a lack of self-confidence, or insecurity sprouting from a quarter-life identity crisis.

I don’t really know the reason.

But the way I feel today is different from the way I felt yesterday. The way I will think tomorrow will be diverse from how I am thinking now.

Yesterday, there was fire. It was a blazing passion in my eyes and at my fingertips. I was rabid resolve and fierce fortitude, dancing in flames and writing in smoke.

Today, I have only burns, the blaze of yesterday a faint echo around piles of ash in my brain. I am aching to rekindle the bliss of before with only scars on my palms and dust at my feet.

Dreams and reality.

Madness and rationality.

Hopefulness and pessimism.

Heart and Mind…They are at odds, two vital beings tugging my soul in opposite directions. I can feel it in my ribs, this stretching tension as I wobble in the center, tilting one way or the other each day.

Back and forth.

I am a perplexing paradox.

Yesterday, I could do this.

Today, I can’t.

Tomorrow, I don’t know.

Sometimes it feels as though we must choose between chasing dreams or living reality. It seems impossible to make room for both. And in those moments, the mind shouts louder than the heart and we wonder if it is all a colossal waste of time.

Might I live a simpler existence if I leave it all behind? Shall I drop the pen, chase humbler dreams, search for meeker purpose?

Then forever wonder what might have been.

I don’t know if I can do this. I cannot yet recognize if this truly is a waste of time, and if one day I will come to accept that of myself and let the words run dry. But for now, even on the days I don’t really think I can do this, I keep pushing.

Because it’s a journey, and we take it one step, one word at a time.