7-10-01

Moving forward in time I am becoming invisible by my lack of beauty by the world’s standards.  I awake from fresh nightmares where I am no one and do not matter.  Where I am lost and it is too late.

Some days I find hope; an unexpected buoying of my spirit, but how elusive.

Just as easily it slides away.

My body grows as my spirit shrivels.  I squandered the best of me and have cheated those to whom it rightfully belongs.

It is a debt I cannot pay.  Some days I dream of deliverance; of being set free from the overwhelmingly heavy gravitational pull of Earthly existence.

Shame on me for not treasuring the life God gives me each day, but something is wrong with my senses.  I can no longer feel, see, hear, taste, touch beauty.  I try to give, but I have so little to offer.

I feel I am merely a vacuum, a parasite, drawing out of others what is not mine, and though they give willingly, I know it is not equitable.  There is no exchange, only a draining, a siphoning.

I contribute merely a presence, a watchful eye.  I am a guardian and companion scarcely meeting the basic needs of my children, minimally fulfilling a position in their lives.  Yet in a world where many children have no mother at all, no father, I am at least better than a void.

I used to think I knew who I am.  But now I think I was fooling myself.  Attempting to choose an identity and “be it”.

Sometimes I think I am a good actress and life is just a play.  I must remain in character at all times.  It is expected.

Sometimes I feel like a misfit who somehow got here accidentally or stayed longer than I was supposed to by mistake.

I believe in Heaven and Hell.  I don’t believe in purgatory, and yet I feel like I am somewhere in an in-between place; between the living and the dead, between Earth and something, but painfully far from Heaven yet.

Copyright STLloyd 2001