the little engine has to believe it can.

nothing seems to have more gravity or anchor than anything else. so I fight consciousness with every stitch and fiber, struggle just to stay sleeping, where the wheel is handed over to someone a lot smarter than conscious me and, to boot, there are no actions with disastrous and disappointing consequences.

I have a sort-of date later this evening, and I approach it with utter dread, sure that toads are going to climb out of my mouth and splat all over the table. I seem to be caught in a downward vortex of not-trying, of avoidance and shame and hiding out, and everything I do seems only engineered to spin it faster, to sink me. I know I need to kick upward, push back against the momentum, but it's hard hard hard and I can't quite see why.

am I sinking myself? determined to fail? urging for ruin? it doesn't feel that way. feels like I'm struggling to get through. but so much disappointment. it's like falling asleep, like letting oneself freeze to death, succumbing. I try and try and am not sure I know how to get someplace better. it's been so, so long, and the more progress I make, the longer and harder seems the road. part of me says, well, that's life, chica. it ain't easy. but I just keep thinking: broken toy-- sprung mechanism.

I know it's going to keep being hard, pushing back against the pattern of habit, hard to drag myself into thinking in new ways. I need to pick myself up, brush myself off and start trying again-- just start-- a little bit here, a little bit there. start with the sit-ups and keep going. treat myself like a precious object. if I don't, no one else will. this is my life. I have opportunity-- if I can just pick myself up and try to quiet all the clamoring fears-- possibility blooms kind and unjudging before me, spreads wide open-- only believe in it, believe in myself-- and stop buying into all the mean mental rot. I have a choice-- to be perfectly okay. I have the say-so, no one else. it's up to me.