Hurry up and wait...

I feel like I am bursting out of my own skin. I sit in a room filled with people I know, people I helped to create and yet I feel like a total stranger. Sometimes I try and rationalize the sensation by thinking it is the calm before the storm. Sometimes, when we sing, I see people looking at me really intensely. I imagine that one of them is someone in the business who has the golden ticket in his or her pocket and suddenly my financial and emotional struggles disappear and the rain-stained window I look out of every morning is the one attached to a tour bus. But it isn’t… not yet. It’s some person who gives me the ultimate compliment.. saying I should try out for the Voice or American Idol. And they mean it with full sincerity- that this will be my ticket out of the complacency that has bred my contempt.  I drag my body from have to- to need to and slump into one crevice or crack of another, drowning myself in food and wine to numb the numbness; avoiding the light, avoiding being the center of nonsensical chatter about the choices I have made thus far in occupation, in love… as though any of it really matters or is worth the pontification…. It’s not. Not yet.

I spend endless nights, fighting with children who don’t want to go to bed, fighting my own urges to get into bed while soothing the hearts in my day that wish they could get out of bed. I think of the idea of bed and all it brings... rest I so deeply need, comfort I crave… the platform of cushion and silk that once was the backdrop to sensuality and fire… that same comfort that now traps me in have to’s, need to’s, avoidance… the same cushion of comfort that now acts as a thin platform I must lay perfectly still on or I may fall into an ocean of sharks… or inadvertently touch toes with the thing I have grown to loathe.

Can burned grass grow back? When the poisons have seeped so far into the root, try as you may to nourish and repair… but is it not wiser simply to re-sod? How long must I blend in, try to go unnoticed, while secretly screaming to get out. Clenched mouth, only opens to sing or to pour in fats and foods to live a little longer to fill everyone else’s needs… Mouth glued shut while silently screaming. My arms waving wildly in the air “pick me!”… and yet my arms haven’t moved from my side… Only my dog hears my silent screams and even she seems stuck… constantly planning her next escape where she can run free… We look out similar windows. Our dreams aren’t that far apart.

Those few minutes of snooze time work to grant me a few more minutes of my own, not filled with the proverbial pull from people who can’t pull their own.

What was healthy today is poison tomorrow. I’d ride my own melt, but there isn’t any room left for even myself to sit. Tired of begging for what should be mine. Tired of watching half-wits and half-hearts take the light… and they mask it in their phake-philanthropy that does better to serve their image than they ever saved another soul. And they parade around half-naked, begging to be ogled and adored and then publicly shame whoever pauses to admire what is so flippantly flaunted. 

People who steal my sets, my vibes, my will and present it half-assed and half dressed to make up for where they lack in heart and skill. Please tell me this is just a test... Tell me this is going to turn into something soon... When can I call it 'too much' and cash in? When is it my time? When will it be my turn?