02-01-2023

I guess I hadn’t really considered the idea of my story not ending in happily ever after.

I said the things we all say.

“I’m going to die alone.”

Maybe I said it one too many times aloud…turns out the universe was listening.

& Now the only thing that’s certain anymore, is that my story isn’t recorded among the cosmos by Gods… Nothing concerning stars, and whether they’re crossed, or whether or not they’re remnants of spilled Olympic ink; their droplets stuck hovering in predestined perpetuity above my clouded head.

Shakespeare sure as shit didn’t shape my future.

It wasn’t told by Tolkien, Tolstoy, or Twain.

Not even Nicholas sparks Novel.

My novel lacks novelty… if you could even call it that.

Hell, I doubt if my whole story would fill the pages of even this very journal.

It’s one of the many reasons that I keep finding myself wandering the topography of my brain in its entirety thinking about before… reminiscing in thens, rather than relishing what’s left of my now.

I spend my time scouting the peaks and valleys of my gray matter for any missing moments, working my familiar way backwards through memories in my mind’s Time Machine.

Problem is- I’ve walked this brain terrain enough times to carve trails all throughout its grooves- clearing them of any identity debris far quicker than I’d liked or could’ve anticipated…

Which keeps leading me down the same windy, Pixies-Where is My Mind-ey, neuro-illogical pathways.

It feels funny to say, but…

they feel like they don’t belong to me.

Or, at least, not my current incarnation.

It feels like the more I visit- the more I look through the rear-view finder- the more it feels like I’m experiencing my life from a skewed angle… like I’m watching an old family friends’ home movies, which are riddled with familiar characters and plots spliced together to create some pseudo-spinoff of my original take.

So… now, here’s where I’m at.

I’m at point where the past isn’t my own anymore, and my future no longer belongs to me. While trying to stay busy wrapping myself up in the present.

Everybody keeps reminding me it’s a gift.

Well, it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to. And you might just, too, if the best gift in the world was given to you only to end up collecting dust in the corner of a cluttered room… still mostly wrapped, but with just enough of the ornately decorated paper missing to see how great its contents WOULD be… were they to… be.

Beautifully useless and cruel.

Waiting.

Waiting in its defunct state, waiting just to be returned, waiting for its giver to show up at their convenience-but your surprise-

…demanding it back.

But… who knows? Maybe it was never really mine to begin with in the first place, & I just felt I had enough time. Enough that there would surely be some leftover for wasting, and I’d make up the difference later.

I’m still catching my breath trying to wrap my head around how small of a jump it is from later… …to too late.

💋,

Emma