Nothing

I don't think I'm quite in my right mind at the moment.

That's okay. I've come to find that one must mine confusion in order to come up with clarity.

This is not beautiful. This is not poetic.

That's okay, too. Beauty and poetry are my safety nets - or maybe just the chains that hold me to the ground. And I believe now is the time for me to fly.

It's so hard to imagine open space - or even simply not being confined. (Nothing is the only thing in the universe accurately defined by what it is not.)

I've felt trapped for a long time. I'm sure there's some sort of irony in that, but there's always some sort of irony in everything. I don't know why I so frequently point it out.

I hate who I was. No, that's not true.

I hated who everyone seemed to think I was. (Quiet, strange, smart girl; wears skirts, reads books, is a bitch, possibly a lesbian.)

There was a time when I'd have given anything but myself to be thought of as someone else. What I couldn't see was that it never really mattered.

I will not try to list who I am. That would be pointless - just another way of locking on chains.

When I read back over this, I won't like it. It is not beautiful; it is not poetic.

Neither, however, is it unfettered.

If only I could bring myself to be everything - to walk away from all the things that hold me trapped. I'd leave behind my past, all the people I once thought I knew, and all the expectations and limitations, drop them in the places I'd long decided would have no meaning to me later, and let them spiral on - without me.

But then who would I be?

(Nothing is the only thing in the universe accurately defined by what it is not.)

I'm vacillating between past, present, and future, knowing that the last is the only thing I can really change.

I don't want to revisit my past. I already told you that I hated who everyone seemed to think I was.

I laugh, because this piece seems to be about a question I refuse to answer, and nothing is the only thing in the universe accurately defined by what it is not.

Nothing, everything.... I'm beginning to suspect that they are the same.

And that all that makes me - makes us - is a trap.

This is not beautiful. This is not poetic.

This is everything.

(This is nothing.)