My whole life I’ve felt on the verge of something great but not quite there

Not quite close enough to touch it

Is it me holding me back or all these things inside of me that eat me alive?

Fear and self-doubt dancing in my aching mind

Despair and self-loathing feasting on my insides

Keeping me up at night and so far back inside my head during the day I have to scrape and claw to get back out

It feels like I have done nothing for almost a year

Lying in fetal position in my bedroom, waiting for something to happen to me

The feeling splits me up, takes me apart bit by bit

When I take a step back, force myself to see the bigger picture, my life in my hands

Put each jigsaw piece into its rightful place and see how much maturity and peace I have gained since this time last year despite my belief I was abandoning myself

Despite accepting the possibility that I am simply unlovable for my faults

If the sky were to suddenly open wide and devour the earth whole

All reason were to fly out the window, the sun and moon consumed by a black hole, the atmosphere swallowed up into nothingness

All that would remain is you

Your memories, the choices you made, the ways in which you touched the lives of others

If you won’t fight for the things you love, what do you have left but that deep dark oblivion?

The only thing that can save you are the small things

The quiet acts of courage and warmth that define you in the end

Never the unattainable significance you grapple with your own expectation of

Reach in and yank out every part of yourself

Teetering on the edge of greatness is not all you have to be

Living in the space between who you are and who you wish to be twists you in unexpected ways

You always feel so close, so within reach it’s practically tangible

Dragging yourself on your hands and knees over broken shards of who you once were just to taste it

Only seems to take you further from the place you thought you’d arrive at

So far removed from the photo on the box you were sure you were building toward

There is no obvious arrival, only the quiet hum of longing, the weighted pull of something new

The image of yourself begins to shift

Not in any dramatic, sudden way, but in the quiet moments where you realize you’ve already crossed a line you didn’t even see

Changing in ways you never thought possible and every now and then, it feels like the pieces of you are falling into place