Sat, Dec 08, 2001 4:28AM -0600

In the quiet depths of my soul I face the utter void of lonely existence. There is nowhere I can turn to for solace and comfort, no safe harbor where my heart can rest. I am floating and bobbing on this empty sea like a ship that has lost its mooring, and all I can do is try to find the words that will keep me afloat. With the new dawn comes a new horizon, and I try not to think that with everyday, the shore seems no nearer. You would think that being lost at sea for this long, I would've just taken up the life of a sailor, the life of a pirate, sailing the seven seas, and never longing for land. But I still long.

The count, the reckoning, is now in years and, yes, nonetheless, I have forgotten what living on land is like. The longing is just this vague and senseless desolation eating away at my insides like a cancer, leaving me weak and feverish. Even sleep is no comfort, dreaming no surcease.

And yet, at the least, I have regained the habit of awaiting the next sunrise. As long as there are pages to flip, I cannot simply put the book down. Maybe, just maybe, I'll get there some day. I don't know when, I don't know how, but to just give up now and forget about it is foolish conceit. I can't claim to know what will happen. Maybe I'll be right after all, when the reckoning is in decades, and I am still without a haven in sight, but I cannot claim that there is no land out there until I have actually sailed those infinite leagues.

But I have ceased to hope. My heart will no longer flutter with joy when I see dark shapes upon the horizon. I do not dare hope that it might be land, and I dare not stray from my course only to find out that they were only clouds after all. And, yes, I have surely sailed past land, maybe even entire continents, without being brave enough to attempt a landing, but I have forgotten how to navigate the shoals, how to keep from running aground, and I suppose I would rather be half-alive and moving, then complete dead and still.

I suppose I would rather choose the familiar misery.

But, yeah, it's slowly killing me. I can feel it: My soul calcifying, my heart being ground down into senseless meat.

I do not know what to say, how to be, what to do, I am lost in my own life, a victim of my own circumstances, disempowered by my own failures. I don't know what I want, but I am tired of looking, and these little things scrape and tear at my skin.

For the most part, you do not die from big massive wounds--it's really the accumulation of small wounds here and there that do you in, and I am too young to want to die but too old to pretend I'm immortal and that I can't be wounded, and a desperate man clinging to a pathetic life is, I suppose, not really a man at all, just some hopeless shadow, trying to stay in the sunlight, but this is all I've got, this is all I know, and I really don't know what else I can do.

What can I say? Futile or not, tomorrow is another day.