Journey mercies

The plus and minus about me is that I find it very hard to pretend. I can't pretend to be someone I'm not because it eats into me and I don't do well with expectations because if I can't rise to meet those expectations, I won't try. But it does mean that I give up on people too easily as well, because I simply won't try to live up to their expectations. Maybe I could have tried harder, hung around longer, weather out the so called 'phases'.

Irony; they all thought I was going through a phase.

Twice I've heard it. Twice just goes to show that they never knew what was in my heart. Twice to show that for all that was tauted, they never knew me. Irony.

You know what a juggler does? I am very much like a novice juggler, focusing every ounce of energy and concentration in keeping the balls I'm juggling in the air without dropping a single one of them. The balls represents different facets of my life and throughout time, one or two did fall, but the strain of keeping the bigger balls in the air keeps me from picking the smaller ones up.

And as time passes, the motion of juggling takes its toll on me and it takes sheer determination to just keep it going even though the temptation to let the balls drop is so tempting.

It does not help either when you have one or two people come along, looks at what you're doing, and decides maybe you just need advice in how you're juggling the balls. It's as if a baby who has yet to learn to walk is being told how to lift one foot after the next when all the baby really needs is time to learn by itself. The worse type of advices are those that tell the baby in a know-it-all way, "You should be running." How constructive is that?!?

At times like this, it takes sheer determination to keep oneself from dropping the balls you're juggling so you can throw one heavy one at their heads. Why? Why do people like to tell other people what to do with their lives without first trying to understand what it means to them?!! It boggles the mind that they can't understand that different lives experience different things, and what one person may experience and find works for them, does not mean it will be the same for another person!! It annoys the hell out of me.

Maybe when I become a professional juggler and the challenge changes from doing it, to how I'm doing it. But for now, it's just doing it that keeps me harried. I don't need people to come up to me to tell me how to do it. I need people who will stand beside me and tell me, "You can do it!" Because God knows the doubt, the tension and the thought that one day I'm going to drop the balls and I'm going to mess up big time, is already draining all the energy out of me. I need encouragement. Not advice. Full stop.

And today, I dropped the balls. And I refused to pick them up. Every single one of them, just lying there, scattered on the floor.

I'll have to pick them up again sooner or later. But not today. Not today.