There's not enough time.

I finally want to live and there’s not enough time.

I found things that make me happy.

I am healed and whole and alive.

I finally found things that make me happy,

And there’s not enough time to do it all.

Everything changed in one moment

But really, it was along time coming.

I was looking in the mirror,

Putting paint on my face,

And I realized I want a future.

I want to get a master’s degree.

I want to go to law school.

I want to be in love again

And maybe have kids

And travel

And make a difference.

I want to stamp out the sex-slave trade between Thailand and Saudi Arabia.

I want to go on a helicopter ride somewhere, anywhere.

I want to give a toast at my little sister’s wedding.
I want to have my own photo show.

I want to adopt a child.

I want to grow old with someone I love, someone I can hold hands with every day and find a million different ways to kiss.

I want all of these things and there isn’t enough time. I could devote my life to liberating women from the nastiness of men and never get to work on a constitution. I could spend my life behind the lens of a camera and never get to writing a symphony for guitars and guitars only. I could do so many things and each thing makes me think of what I am not doing.

That is how I see things. Everything is a dichotomy of ideas and experiences and emotions.

Christmas: family, love, abundance, orphans, war, death.

Love: sunshine, comfort, sex, loneliness, mortality.

So that’s it. That’s where I am at. I am sitting in front of my computer, wanting to live for the first time in my life and feeling like I can’t do everything.

Oh Jean Paul Sartre! Oh crushing social consciousness! Oh everything.

Afternotes:

Rape really fucked me up for a long time. I’m glad that’s over.

From my first introspective moments on, I didn’t understand why people stayed alive for so long. I didn’t want to die, I just didn’t understand why people cared so much about living. Life just seemed so futile. Being raped rocked me into the realm of dangerousness. I make no apologies for that as it was not my doing, having my innocence and self-respect and privacy and body assaulted. I hung on by a thread for a while, a thread strengthened by the fact that I couldn’t stand the idea of hurting people I loved. But that is over, and now I understand the will to live, to continue on into the future. Now I get what so many people tried to explain to me over the years…its thrilling.

If I ever lose this feeling again, I’ll go back to this post and remind myself that I have things to do, and there’s no room for indifference.