I often feel inadequate —
Like I am constantly yearning but never becoming.
I often wonder if I will ever be enough,
If anything I ever do will ever be enough.

I try so desperately to pretend that I am,
For I find it unbearably humiliating that I am not.
And like lasers carving their path through my skin,
I feel their expectant eyes —
Eyes that burn with silent judgment.

I read the words within their gaze —
A book authored by my own anxiety.
And I find that I must pretend,
Or else the words become snakes beneath my skin —
Silently devouring me from the inside out.

So I pretend. I pretend. I pretend.
And my pretense is mistaken for a beauty it is not —
The beauty of strength,
Of resilience,
Of ambition.

But the critical truth —
The one I guard with my life —
Is far uglier than they could ever imagine.

The truth is: I revel in the misunderstanding.
The truth is: I have no desire to be.
For I cannot define what be means for me.

Within the embrace of weightless leaves bound together, I find solace,
A dream that welcomes me in the midst of my reality,
Transporting me to places imaginable yet terribly unlikely to be found.
As chaos ensues around me and emotions within me tangle among themselves,
Inviting that chaos within me,
My soul aches for easement, my mind longs for a place of calm.
Within the stories of another’s imagination, I travel,
And for a moment,
I am no longer conscious.
My soul is no longer here;
It has melded into the novels of my reading.
I become a character unbound by the laws of reality,
The wonder of such a journey is something I constantly seek,
Something that makes my heart no longer succumb to the grip of anxiety.
Oh, how I love to read.