I've made a strange decision
Wrote this out quickly, and put some of the clips from the last 6 months together to help tell it. It's about how pointless but meaningful this all is, and I'm trying to say it the most honest way, so I can make something good out of it... which is still pointless, but hopefully meaningful. The opening line is referring to the feeling that you choose yourself, life, rather than a metaphorical death of spirit.
I've made a strange decision
and now, looking back, it feels most closely alike
to deciding after slowly coming closer to the flame,
to not kill yourself,
and then going about your life afterwards
knowing it is all a blessing and better than before,
but in this new beginning
finding new reasons to still be confused and to struggle
I paint ever day now,
and I have been doing so for 6 months.
approaching a great picture—
unique, a punch, emotional, real, final—
that's mostly what I think about,
and sometimes I think, hey, I'm doing pretty well,
and other times I can't believe how far off I must be
from a great picture.
like the ones that made me want to try this in the first place.
and I can really do well, and fail still,
or really do poorly and succeed anyway,
I know it's a weird world like that,
and I'm hardly in control of who I'll be
and what I'll be doing when I'm 60;
If this is all defining, or in contradiction to,
or just a funny little footnote
for the story I tell a stranger
about how I ended up there.
I don't know if I like myself more now than I did before,
I know I liked myself enough to decide to do this,
but I have no idea where I'm going.
I know that my greatest enemy is the
fear of really being me,
cause even if I find myself aggravated by someone,
their sins are always forgiven, and I end up
loving them simultaneously,
if I suspect they're innocently, and against all expectation,
being themselves, the bastard.
So the same goes for me,
I am aggravated, but in admiration,
when I suspect, looking at myself faintly,
that I'm actually attempting to be myself,
you have to respect that.
I guess that's what all this rests on.
win or lose, you'd rather just bank on yourself,
give him the reins and see how it goes.
really, the "me" I often think of myself as,
is actually the questioning critic,
the procrastinating visitor, the judgmental assumption
that lives in me and protects me.
the "real me" is just the energy that flows through
when I get that me out of the damn way.
so here I am. every day.
waking up. hoping that for as long as possible,
the me I have been stuck in the cage with
will shut the hell up and let the real me
get to work, and hopefully shine some light
in this second chance of a life.