Lines Between Living

What’s your dream job?

I was going to write about journal therapy today.

About how I’m working on it.

How it’s becoming something.

But the truth is simpler and heavier.

The only reason I’m surviving right now

is because I put pen to paper.

That’s it.

I’m deeply agitated by the job I have.

Yes, I’m grateful for it.

It pays the bills or tries to.

But gratitude doesn’t erase exhaustion.

It doesn’t cancel resentment.

It doesn’t make me less human.

I’m tired of putting on a face.

Tired of pretending I care about questions that don’t require conversation

questions answered on a board directly in front of us.

Read it.

What do you think you’re really asking me?

If you’ll have a job?

And if I say no, what then?

What does that do for me?

Nothing.

You don’t actually care about me.

And I’m done pretending otherwise.

Every day, I come home and write.

Because I have to.

Because there is too much inside me

too much I’m not allowed to say out loud,

too much I have to contain to survive the day.

So the page holds it.

I dream of the day I wake up

and go to a café with my laptop,

sit among people who gather to listen,

not because they need something from me

but because my words offer something to them.

I want to tell them how hard I fought.

How many times I tested myself.

How long I stood in places that drained me

until I finally chose myself.

For now, all I have is this small corner.

Maybe no one reads it.

Maybe no one ever does.

But know this

I am fighting tooth and nail

to make this pen and paper mean something.

Someday.