between those moments

I have been thinking about my life over the last couple of days, about the changes I have made, and the ones I haven't. I have been thinking about the course of events that have brought me to the mark at which I stand today. The thing is, where am I really? I question everything, but then again, I always have. Nothing is ever good enough, but has it ever been? I find some solace in the fact that where I stand today is as stable a place I have ever existed in. Every day I get closer and closer to feelings of inner strength and personal contentment. At times, there is still an internal reckoning, and a feeling of being stuck, as if I were up to my knees in quicksand and sinking deeper. Occasionally, my reality seems to be based on a perpetual state of visceral discord, but I am learning to feel and connect rather than intellectualize and isolate. My goal is to take more influence from the external, to acknowledge the objective opinions of others rather than listen solely to negative self-talk conjured up in my own brain...

Up until only recently, my hope for the future rested in the futile effort of shaking my head in an attempt to reset my thoughts from the darkness to the productive. It had always been that I could never do enough, say the right things, work hard enough, and accomplish enough to feel anything more than a fleeting sense of internal pride, but nothing lasting. I would wonder, while trying to work out reasons and explanations like a mathematician, why I was so alone, why did I get so little satisfaction out of... anything, really?

I was reading one of my journals from several years ago and I was struck by how little material there seemed to be in the way of recognition of the positive side of things. There were no moments in those pages worthy of a pat on the back. Throughout those pages, there was so much anxiety, so much unease, so much tension. The word "discord" again seems appropriate.

...I used to grasp for the moments that contained some pieces of my dreams, but never could quite reach them. They are, after all, just moments. Solitary units surrounded by the dense, weighty and dark infinity that is so exhausting to wade through. These days, I refuse to waste time waiting between those moments.