Destinations
How long have I known what I am, who I am?
Was it always? Have I always known, happy to turn a blind eye towards it. Towards him. Or has it slowly crept up on me, like someone slowly beginning to understand a riddle? I look back and all I see is fog, pain, and mistakes. I see paths I didn't take, paths I didn't consider. I see friends who have vanished from my life, leaving scars deep in me. Scars I hide from them, and the world. I've been so scared to admit I may be at fault for some of this. I've been so scared to admit...I may be at fault for it all. I saw my friends as an anchor, something to keep me in place as life blew all around us. However as time passed I didn't realize we all each were our own ships, all each with our own anchors. They all hoisted anchor and began drifting, sailing, going away. To new seas, new shores, new horizons. I stayed there, at the harbor, which is where we were all along. Not at some kind of safe ethereal point in time, but rather a beginning. A safe and guarded coastal town that was meant to ready us for our inevitable treks out to that wide open sea. That dark deep blue almost black sea. So much lurks below and beyond, so much that terrified me to my core. So much that still terrifies me, that and so much more that I've had the misfortune of coming across. I was so obsessed with love I became blind to everything. I was so enamored with my friends that I couldn't imagine a life without them, not knowing that the act of trying to hold them there in that moment in time would ultimately be what led them to escape from me as far as they could. A man, no, boy, pup, grasping at futility, unwilling to let go and follow his friends into that wide open sea. Because of it I find myself in this coastal town alone, watching other generations younger than I venture out with their peers. I'm a man out of his own time, a man who missed his boat, no, worse than that, a man who willingly watched it leave the harbor without him on it. I buried myself in things I thought would make me feel better and make this pain go away. I buried myself so deep I lost myself. Only now am I beginning to feel the open air on my skin again, as I slowly come up from the ground and the dirt falls off my limbs. I weep for what I've wasted.
I found love. Sometimes I feel undeserving. Like I'm keeping her from someone better than me. Like I'm just holding her here in this coastal town. I should have buried myself so much deeper. I should have gone all the way to the center and let myself burn. Alas I stand upon the Earth and look upon her golden hair, her innocent smile, her bosom exposed and shining pale in the moonlight. She is everything and I am nothing. I am an echo of a boy with ambition, and she is a girl ready to take on the world. Oh but my God I cannot think like this. I cannot allow the same shackles to wrap themselves around me and pull me back into the depths of this coastal town. I won't. I-, I won't. I won't because...I have that power. I've always had that power. I've been unwilling to use it because part of me knows with that power comes so much weight. The weight of failure, of falling, of doing the wrong thing, of needing to push myself so much harder. But my soul is so old, so weathered, if I'm not ready now I won't ever be. So again I gaze upon my golden haired girl, and I smile. I will build my own ship, and it will likely be of poor craftsmanship. So I'll build another. And another. I'll build as many ships as I have to until I've built the perfect one for her and I to sail upon. Because I am so God damn tired of this. I hate this coastal town and every God damned memory it's stained with. I hate every friend who left me here to rot, who gazed upon my misery from afar with telescopes on their own vessels. I hate that I let it all control me, become who I am. I'm older than I was, maybe not as clever maybe not as wily. But I will leave this coastal town all the same. I will sail to isles far and wide and experience all I can. I'll become who I always could have. And maybe one day I'll even stop feeling bad about how long it took me.