Poeta Nascitur, Non Fit

8

I cannot fit everything I own into a little camper and travel the United States, meeting people and searching for myself.

It's not that I dislike people but that I don't know how to behave.

It seems there is always an air of falsity to first impressions, like I'm hiding my true self behind dull conversation starters and anecdotal personal interests that no one can take offense to.

And Yet.

I constantly yearn to leave my current place in the world.

To continually rebirth myself in a new city, with a new job, and new people, who I know I won't like and who I will eventually leave,

but I can't fit my things into a car.

I can't fit my life into a suitcase and a box, into a journal full of dreams.

I am in no means a minimalist, or nihilist at that, though I envy their practicality. I will lose everything eventually.

My things will break or be stolen. My friends will grow up and move and I will move on too. And what I don't lose along the way will be lost to me in my own death.

And Still I cling to papers and old receipts.

Socks with holes I refuse to learn to patch and flowers long dead.

In my head I know it's impractical and one day, even a year from now, these wrinkled papers and chipped coins won't matter.

But my head is not the arbitrator of my actions, in fact it is my heart.

Meek and small as it may be, my heart yearns for something tangible when feelings hardly ever are.

In a world that's ever changing, in a mind that's never satisfied, my heart knows what it wants. And I wouldn't have to travel far.

I'd simply have to face the terrifying reality of being myself out in the world.

Where people can see and perceive.

It seems simpler to me to just move from place to place, because it's easier to be yourself when you know the people you meet won't be with you in a week.

But alas, I cannot fit all that I possess into a car and drive, and drive, and drive.

And I cannot be myself in public, I chicken out on every try. So I'm in a state of fluctuation, on a slope of never ending wonder.

I think my life will pass me by.