why not love life?

"Each day is a reason to be thankful," I told her.  I started writing one simple line a day, to remind me of that fact.  "I am thankful for snow."  "I am thankful for the ocean."  "I am thankful for space heaters."  "I am thankful for national health care." 

at some point I stopped being thankful.  at some point, I figured my life was only worth so much as I could count on so many fingers, or as much as I could list for a prospective employer, new friend, lover. 

when did I become obsessed with how much instead of how deep?  instead of how felt.  instead of how i listened, how i waited, how i held.

fear has been engulfing me.  a fear that i once said i didn’t understand in others because i believed my being ran deeper.  and it does, i know it does.  being is unsettlingly deep.  and yet.  and yet that fear overtakes me, undermines me, forgets me of myself.  forgets me of the me i know i am.  not the me, just the i am. 

i am.  the gut-wrenching i am that stood its ground when i knew the small me was lost, so far gone, and all i could do was hope that i would remember i was more.  the small me clawed and scraped at my i am, hoping to gain a leg up, an identity, a grip on my reality that would throw my being into an abyss while making my small me believe it was everything.  the small me that collapsed my worth, destroyed my hope, and made me feel like one small thing was everything.

i am.  it looks beyond the cracks in my surfcae and the things i am not and the things i hope i never become and forgives.  it exudes forgiveness from every pore, every breath, and reminds me that i am more than i could ever imagine.  that i am more than i could ever hope for.  that i am more than i can begin to understand.  and it is enough.

until i can really see it, i will struggle.

darkness and confusion, asfixiation on ideas of self.  of what i can tack on to my image, of what i can accumulate around me.  

here, friend, make me more.  here, lover, make my name one sought after and respected.  here, you benchmark, list me some names that fall below me, that make me something greater, and make you something less. 

oh, ego–rip me apart.  i want so much to be destroyed.  you may be my destruction, but from that great pain could come a ressurection.  rebuild me to be something void of depravity and self-obsession. rebuild me, in the sense that i will no longer be married to you, but free.  a single, moving, changing entity of constancy.  an entity unowned, and unmastered.  an entity so pure that it cannot be swayed by your complex semantics and convicted arguments. 

rebuild me to all that i am, and nothing more.