One More Time

At a place where giving up looks like a viable option. I get so tired of striving.

The voice of Joyce Meyers comes to mind, words she offered in a sermon about defeat: "You get up in the morning and you tell yourself, 'I can do this. One more time. One more time.'"

One more time.

Parenting is worthwhile. Writing and learning are worthwhile. Intellectually, there is no doubt. But when the ground opens up right under my feet where I need to stand, and the flat face of a mountainside plunges up into the sky right in front of me where I'm supposed to pass...that feeling of defeat is really, really hard to deal with. One more time. Hell, I can't even make the first yard.

Josie (best friend) talks about being "put together." It's something of an obsession. Our temperaments are so alike, I know exactly what she's talking about. And I know exactly how far away from that I really am.

I feel it most at that moment just before reality leaves my fingertips, that last grasping second before my fist closes around empty air. Rationale falls away from me, and I'm left scrambling around the floor of a dark cell of impossibilities, with no clue what it is I should be searching for.

It's at these times I take a long look in the mirror and fail to recognize myself. I lose confidence in my identity and question whether or not what I think I should be doing is really what I should be doing.

I really must write. And not just to make the deadlines. I've got to return to the book and pour off some of this anguish.