What’s your story?

When people ask me, “what’s your story?”

I never know what to say.

What is my story? Sometimes I want to say I’m lonely and sad and I don’t do enough but I care too much. And I’m waiting for my life to begin but rather it has already begun and I’m desperately trying to catch up.

“What’s your story?”

My life doesn’t feel like a story. It doesn’t feel like art, like craft. It feels methodical and mundane. More like an essay, an explanation and argument about who I am and who I want to be. Maybe a bibliography, as I reveal that I am not original, rather cobbled together from those that are better than me. My knowledge is gleaned, my words are pilfered.

“What’s your story?”

I’d rather talk about the upcoming chapters than the words I have already spilled out. A fresh page is so much more tantalizing than reliving the spilled ink and grammatical errors. The awkwardly constructed sentence, forced dialogue, and stagnant plot.

“What’s your story?”

I am angry at so many things but I don’t know how to change. Each day is a grain of sand and I am letting the seashore slip through my hands. I have spent so much time in my head I don’t know how to exist in the realm of others anymore. My mind is a prison and my heart a fortress.

“What’s your story?”

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I am trying to take it one step at a time but everyone else is running a marathon. I am looking for love but I am too afraid to find it. I don’t know if I deserve it. The only solace I find is the minds of those long dead and the trail of language they left behind. The only solace I find is in sleeping as when I shut my eyes my unconscious mind cannot fathom the world that claws at me. In my slumber my ravaged chest is healed and everything stops. The clock stops ticking and I am suspended.

I live in the inbetween times.

“What’s your story?”

I am still learning how to write