I am not regurgitating useless words, I am regurgitating words

Why am I my own worst enemy?  Why does my pride and vain ambition, my desire to be liked, my desire to be right, plague me so? And oh, the bitter knowledge that these are just a few of the pennies in my jar that’s filled with all the things that I hate when I remember the words I've spoken, when I remember what and who I truly am inside.

          And then there is the trait in me that seeks to escape oblivion.  The trait that tells me that I can, I should, I must.  Yet, when I square my jaw and clench my fists and shout to the world,

“Do your worst, I can take it!”

…somehow I am surprised when the world answers by doing just that.  When they pick up their gloves and swing, burying their fists in my stomach, my eyes fill with tears and I lose my breath as if I hadn’t asked for it in the first place.  As if it wasn’t me who sent out those query letters. As if someone forced me to go to two auditions in three weeks only to be answered by that deafening sound of silence. 

Rejection has become my only friend.

Because those who I gave my heart to (freely, freely) have given it back.  It is not wanted they say, there is no room for me in their heart.  Not any more.  
        I thought we would raise children and experience all of life together. We promised that we would.  Now whenever I see her, she speaks Words when she used to speak Meaning.  When she used to speak tenderness.

But that doesn’t matter.  Or maybe it does, but all I know is that I want to be ferocious and a force to be reckoned with.  Instead, all I seem to be good at is honing my pride and driving away the people I love.

       Such a vast number of the words written on the internet prove to be nothing more than a regurgitation. Just noise, noise, noise and words that are meant to draw you in and then empty you, never filling you. And maybe I'm regurgitating too, but I hope that you'll see that I'm meaning to be more. I'm trying and failing and trying to make something more.

And still, there are those who have stayed.  I am always afraid of taking them for granted.  But I know (I know) that I do that, too.  The people who  have stayed are the people who gave me the world – Parents who give their love and pride and understanding, never wavering.  Siblings who listen to me and forgive me.  A husband who thinks I'm a beautiful soul who can do anything that I put my mind to.

So I circle back to what I cried out in the first place.  I am the enemy inside of me.  And though I suspect that what I really need in the end is sleep, my words will not let me rest until they are written.  Until they are placed on the page – a promise that I will pick myself back up, dust off the pain, and try again.