9-25

My fingers are fast and twitchy with potential.

I hate waiting. Things are falling into place but I hate waiting for them. My future is there and I itch to reach out and grab it, to skip forward.

Waiting builds character. I don't know. I think I probably have enough character. Too much, even. I'm rich in characters.

I want Instant Pleasure. I want to see my life lain out before me. I want to leap ahead to my autonomy and my own authority where I live how I want to and I am at no one's mercy and I make my own choices and I make my own things and in that I build my own life.

All the pieces are around me and they're beautiful and promising. Sun hits them and they dazzle and I am nervous to reach out and take them; they seem too good to be true. I've been in the cave so long the brightness blinds me, but I edge toward the warmth.

Is this what I've been fighting for, all these years of struggling and discovering and experimenting? Have I reached the end?

Then what?

Can I please rest?

I want to sit in the autumn sun on the drying grass and appreciate what's around me. I want to close my eyes and breathe and feel secure. I haven't been still. I haven't felt calm. Briefly, I was able to rest, asleep on his chest, curled up next to him, but that became another war and I'm exhausted, my sanctuary crumbled.

I'm scared to stop. Things click and turn silver with promise and my determination only grows.

He says, sometimes I think you'd break through the wall instead of going around it.

He's right. Damn.

I pause, I collect myself, I close my eyes and picture that moment in the sun when I can sit and my head can be quiet and my body can be still, and I tell myself to be patient, because the wall will fall if I give it time.