I’ve been struggling a lot recently with just doing life. I turn things into poetry because it’s easier to deal with that way. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. Make a metaphor so you don’t have to face reality.

I get these moments when I see the scenes of my life adjacently. Like I’m not fully in my body. It’s a disconnecting feeling to never be fully in the moment. To think in terms of context. To wonder if any of it is real or if I’m dreaming. Like, how the fuck did I get here? This wasn’t how I imagined any of my life. But I’m not sure if any of the alternatives would have been better. Maybe I’d still be outside of everything, psycho-analyzing.

There are too many paths I thought about going down. Too many adventures named almost and maybe, someday. I could have been a photographer, or a singer-songwriter, or a writer. I could have fallen in love with different people. I could have had my heart broken by strangers I’ll never meet now.

It’s like that book The Midnight Library. Except I’m not dead, and I’m not actually stuck in a library full of all my regrets. Even though some days it feels like it. I honestly wonder how long my Book of Regrets is.

Life is one big fuckery. And I don’t understand how any of this is real. Maybe it’s not.

It is a continual existential crisis every single day.

And I’m coming to understand how much I dislike the expectations of others. I don’t like being told what to do or how to act or how to feel. This is not a shocking theory, but everything is just so…messy. And all I want to do is clean everything and everyone up the way I want to. But it’s impossible.

Honestly, all I want to do is read books, listen to good music, dance around the house, write about heartache, and not have to worry about pleasing anyone else.