Something Different Than You Are

You wanted to be something different than you are. Something more than you are.

You wanted to be someone you are not. Someone this malaise does not sink its claws into and drag down, down, down to the delirious deep, where the present is a weight and the future is the stone lid pulled over your sarcophagus.

Someone who knows how to solve your problems. Someone who has confidence that if those problems were solved, you wouldn’t feel this way anymore.

You felt this terrible helplessness once before, when you were young and your life was not your own. When that life belonged to the people who gave you life but never understood you, people who also wanted you to be different than you are. They wanted you to be steady, happy, normal.

But you were not, and trapped in the cage of what they wanted from you but unable to perform it, the claws of entropy hooked into you and held fast. And then the day approached where you ripped them free and ran, as fast as you could, into a world that seemed hopeful simply because you were the one making the decisions in it. And for a while—a long while—this was enough.

But you are older now. You love, now. And loving means there are certain things you will not sacrifice to get what will make you happy. Because what you love makes you happy, but what you love is also what traps you, what you must provide for, what keeps you from throwing caution to the wind.

What you love is also the claws that hooked back into you so slowly that you did not even feel them until they were buried deep, scraping the undersides of your ribs so that breathing became a thing so painful it must be done only in the shallowest of sips.

Perhaps you did not notice because you did not understand that this could happen to you again. That you could once again find yourself in a place where you feel as if you have no control, no hope, no ability to change your circumstances.

Because your circumstances, for all you hate them, should be perfectly adequate. And they would be, did they exist somewhere else. Or were you a different person.

But you are not a different person. You are you. And you wanted to be something different than you are.