fear creeps in. as surely it must do, that which is not sure, uncertain, born of confusion and doubt comes and overtakes the brain for seconds at night, while reading. how is it that i let it? why must i eat away at myself, my insides full of all the emptiness i sense, crashing uncertainty into uncertainty and building into a nothingness in me, an absence of me, of action and how to be. for it is always the same question that i am asking and staring at self in mirrors, doubting it, wondering which failure comes quicker and how will i let my life be eaten alive by my life, the things i must do? it is not the mundane that i fear consuming me, but rather it is the mundane i rely on when i cannot rely on my dreams. and how will i be able, when the time comes, to cope with everything my life has become and all i must do - the squeezing of soul out of soul - and how can i muster love and sureness in the face of all that i've never been or done? when others tell me i am capable because i am stubborn, because all of us are capable, i do not believe them. i do not trust that which i cannot see. i am afraid, terribly so. i do not know how to force myself into shadows. i do not know how to become that which i adore, ultimately, but am uninformed of, do not necessarily recognize by sight. i do not know how to overcome myself to become myself, that shadow indeed, that pedestalled and glorious monument of myself in the future, its arms wide open and its face smiling. i am not that me. i am deathly afraid of that me. i know not how to overcome the obstacle of myself to become fully myself and to sell myself after to strangers. in truth i am not motivated enough. i am too lazy. i lay here on my back all day with stomach churning, wishing merely for it to stop and yet not taking the walk that was recommended and having trouble swallowing that which will attempt a calming. and instead of using my time of nothingness, and of misery in order to sit still here in front of the computer, concocting my future and my dreams into words on the page, typing my fears away, i sit still in bed, waiting for the moment to end. but nausea lasts longer than a contraction. i'm working on over a week here. and so too, i do not want for that to occupy the thoughts on the page, so why not just avoid writing altogether? why not simply never work towards that which i most want/fear? why not become merely a shell of myself, incapable and undesirable, mothering and nursing and crying all day long? i will instead huddle in corners, fear everything, be nothing and amount to very little. i will live the life of my title character, created from past and present and friends and smoke, and eat each sleeping pill one by one, stomach filling and spinning wildly, upset by convictions finally mustered for the worst possible task, and die miserably and self-righteously and selfishly and all that. i will instead hate myself not for not doing what i want, but for accomplishing the very opposite, the destruction of myself, the tearing down of all ambition, and the swallowing whole of hope. what beautiful pictures i paint, polar opposites of one another, and i, believing neither to be really attainable, sit in-between straddling dreams of one and the fear of another (or perhaps dreams of another and fear of one), walking nowhere, achieving nothing, and endlessly bitching about it all.