everything passing by is not coming back

are you sure what side of the glass you are on?

So much thinking, these past few days. It's starting to show--one love's walking on eggshells around me, another's just shaking her head. I have the answer I expected to take this next week. It's not precisely the answer I wanted.

see the safety of the life you have built
everything where it belongs

But I did place my fortunes, in a sense, directly in the hands of another. And the decision was made. It's up to both of us, now, to adapt to that decision.

feel the hollowness inside of your heart
and it's all...
right where it belongs

When home's stopped being home, though, what other options are there? Even though it's not the place, it's the person. Or perhaps not the person, per se, but the space between, the space between that person and so many other things.

what if everything around you
isn't quite as it seems?

And all my efforts at transparency occlude in the end. I am not transparent. I am not easily translated. I am not, it seems, truthful, reliable, or steadfast, three things I would have sworn, a few weeks back, that I was.

What's left? I don't know that yet.

what if all the world you think you know
is an elaborate dream?

Striving to find hope in the bleak landscape. There are no trains, now; they've all burnt to dust. In places the ground's starting to sprout again: mostly grasses, yet tender under trampling feet, but the occasional fruiting body, the rare delicate flower trembling open in dawn's weak light. I suppose it's something.

and if you look at your reflection
is it all you want it to be?

It hasn't been for some time now. But then, that's my burden to bear, I'm thinking. The inner world doesn't match the outer one, but the inner world no longer matches the inner one, either. Things have changed, and radically, and I'm still not sure how far the change is going.

what if you could look right through the cracks?
would you find yourself...
find yourself afraid to see?

I do find hope in that, given the opportunity to build anything, I grew poppies and dark grasses, mushrooms and catwillows. Given the chance to summon anything, I grew trees. I made a gathering place, with a fire for the chill of evening, a fur-draped stone with a book to read. I made a home, not a war zone.

That's something, isn't it?

what if all the world's inside of your head
just creations of your own?

And in all this time, all my multifaceted chosen faces, out of everything I've ever done and ever been...for most of this week I've been wandering around with a set of antlers, draped in purple iris blooms. No jagged patchwork seams, no decaying skin, no blood-spattered hair, no torn and ragged clothes. Just flowers, and long skirts, no elaborate pretenses.

I think that says something, too.

your devils and your gods
all the living and the dead
and you're really all alone?

But even my ability to read my subconscious messages is going awry. I don't tell the truth even to myself, the soul best equipped to understand. And every time I nod, and accept that I've made the next decision, I back away and rethink it.

I am tired of second-guessing myself.

you can live in this illusion
you can choose to believe
keep on looking but you can't find the woods
while you're hiding in the trees

I'm also tiring of trying to parse out others' signals. I am fighting, I am fighting very hard, to remember what I was told: when I hear the words spoken, they mean what the words say. No more. No less. And there it ends.

It is extremely difficult for me not to examine all sides of each letter, before stringing them together again and looking behind the words for deeper meanings. It is hard to simply accept what's said at face value.

what if you could look right through the cracks
would you find yourself...afraid to see?

So. Step one. We have the decision. Step two: I start to accept the things I don't want to, and I stop protesting against them. If I can't be trusted, so be it. There is not a single impulse resembling fickle in my nature, and I don't intend to start: but I can't keep staring at the truth that others hold about me and not start to integrate it.

I'll work out the whys later, and likely, the ponderings on further changes after. Right now, that's my next goal: acceptance.

I am flawed. Accept that.

I am not always truthful, even when I truly think I'm telling the truth. Accept that.

I can't be trusted. Accept that.

I want to set myself another week to work through this. But I don't know if I can work that fast.

(Lyrics adapted from Right Where It Belongs, from Nine Inch Nails.)