I am sitting here weeping.

How much more optimism can this world beat out of me?

The happiness of others is a painful stab and the tears come even more. They are all finding happiness and I carry a loneliness that gets heavier than I thought I could ever bear. The darkness is willing the light to simply hate them and let the envy and jealousy finish its work in my heart. Her smile is a reminder of things I have never felt.

 I would love some comfort, someone to tell me it will be okay. The problem is, who would this person have to be for me to believe them right now. I have friends who I could call. They would assure me, they would comfort me. I should be thankful for that. I am not. This time in my life is being recorded in my mind and heart and it is breaking me down. To share it with others would add their minds to those who know the sadness and brokenness I continue to  live in. I can't live with their sympathy too. I just could not bear it. And they are all becoming something. Becoming partners, becoming happy, becoming strong in their careers. All I can do is watch other lives blossom. I feel dead down to my roots. I am holding on. I won't break, I will simply find enough hope to make it to the next day. Today my hope is empty and I sit in my dark room, thankful my tears can keep me sane another night.

Life is a grindstone. For many it does its work to sharpen the steel and gives its bearer a strength and purpose to live a life where one can cut down the obstacles in their path. But what if the steel stays connected to the grindstone? When the steel gets ground away, there is nothing but to lay the flesh to the grindstone, to the bone, and then to the beating heart. When the heart is destroyed, what is there to do but mourn?

I don't know if I'll be coherent. I just have the bee hive mind and it won't stop. I am waiting. I am in this waiting place. I am trying to be patient but the well of hope is a tank that is always tipping near empty. Then some days it just goes dry and it takes all I have to scrape up a little more hope. The question is how much damage do I do to myself on empty. The depression, the absolute wish for the world to stop. I hate it. But I don't have much else right now. I've been moving, taking some walks. I should be proud but perfection comes a callin and it takes me down. It's truly better than nothing and more than I've been doing. Perfection is so cruel. It taunts me unceasingly. I can't just enjoy this beautiful life. I can't just see what's in front of me and be thankful for this blessed life. Things are supposed to be fun. I dedicated my years to something that only brings me stress. It's supposed to be fun. What's the point if there is no fun in this? Yes, I need a job, I need a responsibility. We all have to grow up but it's still supposed to be fun. I'm so tired of not having any fun.

I do so very much want to ignore this election. Normally I succeed pretty well. Now with Facebook, it is hard to ignore. I don't want to get into who I would elect. For me the choice is pretty obvious but that is my personal feeling. What I wonder about is the incredibly divide between people in this country. Let's not even discuss the world. That one is too much for my mind to contemplate. The truth is, I feel the divide even in my own world. I want to ignore all the things I see from the other side. Things I see that make me disgusted and worried how someone can see others that way. But doesn't that make me part of the problem. I wanted to start deleting people from Facebook because of their political allegiances. But I believe that makes me part of the problem. Where will we end up if we aren't open to at least trying to understand the opposition. Politics has become this ugly thing. At this point, what are we gaining by so vehemently hating our opposition. We must find cooperation and unity. It is a sad truth in our world that the people who should be in politics would never go near it.

The stillness in my mind is not real. I can feel the storm already in the quiet. How does one organize a beach full of sand? That's how it feels trying to convey what I'm feeling, who I am, what I need to say or express. The visual stop sign in my head. Chasing perfection, wanting to only create a worthy product. I need to stop processing, stop rearranging, stop hoping for the right thing. I am the right thing. I am the right thing this very moment. I can't stop for perfection's cold determination. It is impossible, it is useless. So is worry. What is worrying's purpose? Why does it infect the beautiful life I was given? I see through the eyes of understanding, of empathy, of what is beautiful in everything, even the darkness. I deeply want to enjoy that gift's bounty. Worry is something I need to stop worrying about.

I come from a family of  expectations, of standards and the path well taken. I was born of a different stock. I have the most trouble with trying to balance and settle the two. I love my family. I am inherently nothing like them. They despise a person like Lady Gaga. I see myself in her and found such peace knowing that I was indeed born this way. Their standards and expectations have never really fit me. I got the degrees, I did the work but I lost my passion on that journey. The trouble comes in finding a way to love myself and live my life with my purpose in mind. But I am still adrift, looking for that purpose. I always seem to find the most comforts in the extreme of things. I am adroitly self aware. I have an analytical love of looking at things from all angles, including myself. But this self awareness also comes with an incredible inability to truly know who I am. I sense that there is a door somewhere that if I could open would let me break free. The other side of my coin knows that this is an oversimplification. The truth is I have relied on my family. I have leaned against them when I could not stand. But the truth is also that if they disappeared, they would probably not recognize the person who would appear. I have happily created a box for family and a box for friends and I always live in terror that the two worlds will collide and I will have to make a choice to expose my true heart to a family that would reject it. The love would never cease but the need to "cure" me of my liberal stupidity would make our relationship unbearable. Because I can separate them, I can find a way to survive. This also sets me apart from them. The fact that my friends aren't truly my family separates me from them too. So there is left a place where I am and will be alone. I dream and pray for a man to come and keep me company in that space but I don't see that happening soon. There is little going on for me right now. So I dwell in that place. It is lonely but it is safe. I have to meditate to try and keep it calm. Because I overthink which leads to anxiety which exacerbates depression which makes the place even more lonely which makes me analyze and overthink. The words change but the need, the desire to understand, to change, to be a person looking forward to the future keeps me in a place where rest seems almost impossible. Sometimes I envy those who are rich in this world and poor in their minds. I am desperately sick of being the opposite.

I was always told I was a good writer. This could be true. This could be utterly, painfully false. But I've spent my life being scared of being so frantically imperfect. So I take this moment to say that I'm going to write. I have no great aspirations of great literary contributions. All I know is that my head is full of things to say. Some are witty, some are useful, some seem artfully poetic and meaningful (to me at the time at the very least). I was going to name this blog "Quality not Guaranteed" but some other brain trust thought of using it first. Aren't we all so daringly original? So I stared at the screen and tried to think of a fantastically amazing title. I couldn't think of one. So I just thought of words that came to mind when I thought of myself. The first was frail. Well that sounded way too emo right off the bat so I kept pondering. The beautiful fricative sound of the letter f kept appearing in my mind. Now I knew my favorite f word was going to be a little too revolutionary for a simple blog where I could narrate this crazy brain of mine. Frail as Fuck was just too much of a title for a simple gal like me. So I thought of another F word to bridge the gap between such disparate yet fricative descriptions. The reality is that in this world a person can be looked down on for being frail. We all must be strong. Weakness is frowned upon. But the older I become the more I see the strength in my frailty. The most beautiful things in this world are most often the ones that can be shattered easily. So how can I also be fierce? Everyone gets broken eventually. A child's heart can never fully keep its innocence. The real decisions come after one gets shattered. We fortify around the breakable center. We build walls. We apply frost to obscure the heat signature of a full heart. I did a lot of that. I still do much of the time. But I strive every day to keep my softness, my vulnerability, my incredible ability to love. Am I soft? Yes, I am. But this softness lets me give love more freely. It lets me see the insane beauty in everything. It lets me see in the hearts of others and love my enemies. My frailty is open to the world. The way I fight for my ability to love makes me frail and it makes me fierce.