Fever without the Dream

Now more than ever I think about the frustration I feel, the disassociation, the longing, the rage, the hopelessness, and the audacity of the hope I feel when I feel it. 

I’m consumed by the bleakness of my age. I am too old for myself and too young for others. My growing pains take the form of foggy car windows and the simplicity and multitudes in the question: how does it feel? 

I have so much feeling, everything is so intense, sometimes I wonder if I might die. I wonder what it means to grow up right now. 

The world is big and it’s scaring me that there are so many things I used to believe in with all my heart and all of my soul and why don’t I believe anymore? Boys need backbones and why don’t I believe anymore? 

I tell my friends I promise to believe you if you tell me you're hurting. And I wish I could tell you what it feels like to live in nostalgia.  I hope you know this feeling already. 

Learning to be alive and remain alive has become an incredibly ambitious undertaking. 

I am trying to teach myself that my bones are supposed to break, a fish is supposed to flop in my mouth, and my chest is supposed to feel carbon and chaotic.

I am learning how to just be and that “being” is a holy practice. I’m also accepting that something true and bitter shifts inside me when I realize I’ve become mature. 

Mornings are my time, I don’t have to hate myself for the things I can’t control. I’m getting better at learning how to mend. 

And of course, I know that the world exists outside of me, but right now, in this moment, during this ache, there are a lot of endings I’m trying to love.