It truly is the inability to forgive that holds me back, like a net tossed over me and staked into the ground. I can see the skies above me and reach for them, try my greatest and try harder, plan to make it happen and defeat all odds, break past this mysterious barrier by simply willing myself through it. But it never happens. I always feel doomed to this cold low dirty ground. My only choice is the river. The net condemns me to it, tells me the bright high skies are not for me. I am a ground wallower. It tells me to remember how I got here, remember why I remain here. This ground and this river is where I belong.

Not anymore, mother fucker. I'm gonna cut you....

Forgiveness.

Forgiveness. Here we go.

Isn't there an answer? Right there in front of my nose? Didn't I always say there was? I am blindfolded, flailing my arms in front of me for it. It's there. I know it is. I probably am already grabbing onto it, I just don't know. It seems like I have thrown too many options into the pot. I already had it but I just want to keep denying it. And I still don't even know it.

Vague, huh? I know, right?

I feel like I should be able to grab onto something and it will shoot me directly into the sky.

There it is.

I don't want to go at the expense of rejection. More accurately, at the risk of rejection.

.....................................................................

The word "that" puts a detachment onto everything. I am not sure if I can ever know why or how the nervous system works through electrical impulses and chemical messages, I just know "that" it does. You can explain to me everything surrounding that phoenomenon, but I will never fully understand because some things just simply are.

I wonder about my fascination with sadness. I see a river of sadness and I want to dive into it. I want to get caught in its current. I want to feel it nearly drown me. It isn't a negative feeling for me. It is like I am riding a wave that wasn't intended for us. That is too scary and dangerous for us. It is no wonder no one wants to come with me. I don't know if I can ever explain the amazement it brings me, enough to convince someone to join me in the venture into the depths. Flowing through the beat and the swish of the current, brushing right over the riches of the river floor, absorbing it into my skin, down the avenues the earth has created for itself... its most simple and obvious pathway to balance. Only fishes were meant to be there, not me. But I see it anyway. It is a gift that I can bear the heaviness and bright white beauty. It is a silent one. It is a free one. There is no breathing there. There is no sleeping....

I can't even kid myself about it though. It is hard to let go of the nagging that draws me into that river. Something always wants to bring me to that dark underworld, the scary forbidden place, as though I need to keep it in the light. Is that so? As though it holds answers I still need to find in it, for me and for the rest of the world to know.

I know the only way to go there is alone.