Choke To Death On Inspiration

What I have right now is almost too much.

I am in a weird transitional place this year and things are moving slowly in some directions and quickly in the others. The effect is much like that of a good hard won drunk, where you really poured them down, ate too little and talked too fast. You are now standing in one place, unable to get your feet to follow the directions you are giving them but you experience a very real sensation that you are moving. The spins hit you like an out of control bar fighter, and you hit the ground in a black streak. When you come to, there is evidence of what happened, fragments of memory and a freight train running through the upper right side of your skull. Unsure of your next move, you scramble to get to a seated position.

There are so many thoughts that run through my head now. They compete for the front row, where I acknowledge them and pat them gently on the head, letting them know I see them. Each wants that space, wants to feel the warmth of recognition on their face, to know that they are important. I want to give that to all of them. There are just so many.

I have not written in too long, they are cooped up and have become monsters of my own making. Denying them the sunshine, the chance to spread and grow, they are angry and vengeful and no longer taking 'maybe later' for an answer. They don't want to go for a walk now. Now they want to rule the streets.

I will write to let them out. I will write a Chicken Soup for your undernourished, angry, vengeful, ungrateful little soul. The dark, hollow, black one with not enough love in it. You try to fill it up and hope it will glow with the light of a thousand fireflies if you just put more puppies and firefighters and dying children's wishes and the tears of a repenting teenager into it. You accept the promise that if you take it on, it will work. You will feel grateful, fulfilled in your own life, spared the tragedies of chance that happen to others.

I will write soup for your soul, all right. But there are no puppies. I have the truth. I have it burning inside of me like a white hot light fueled by all the missed hopes and squashed dreams of every person you have never met. There is no end to the fuel, but the story is not theirs.

These stories belong to the survivors. The real survivors. The ones you don't hear about on television. The ones that have traveled through life, maybe passed you on the street, with their wisdom and choices, their damage and their pain. They move forward, sometimes slowly, sometimes stopping. All of them have a story. They are all begging to get out. I'm going to open the gate.

Be ready.