Words

Can words belong to people?
...this word is yours, your world, and for another to utter it is to steal your world.  To steal a word is to steal a world.


That was a while ago.  And in case you couldn't tell (for all none of you who frequent this establishment of mine), they're not my words, either.  Oh the irony of me using that phrase in this context.  But alas, I didn't write them.  I would have done so differently if I did.  I'm pretty sure nobody realizes I ever read those.  And unless I'm sorely mistaken, I was definitely not supposed to ever see it, especially not when I did.  The writer of those words has long since stopped writing where they appeared, perhaps unfortunately.

I've gone back there a lot recently.  Perhaps it's all been a misguided attempt at torturing myself, although I have no idea why.  It's just an association I maintain, of pain, from a time when it was relevant, although it certainly no longer is.  I think that something is missing, misguided, mistaken.  Something isn't right, and I can't place it, because everything that used to hurt no longer hurts, no matter how hard I try and everything that once brought elation is tinged with the subtlest streak of pain.  So even though I hope I'm wrong, I think I may have worn something out in myself.

And maybe it's just that I need a break or that the excessive work of the past few months has finally pushed right through any sanity I may have ever had, but I find myself doubting things and wondering why.  I don't fight for it anymore.  To pull this back to the beginning of the post, I don't fight to keep those words.  I'm not afraid of them flying away from me, even though I know, consciously, with dead certainty, that it should bother me beyond anything else.

Embraces scare me right now.  So maybe that's just it, that I need to be left alone for a little bit.  But I'm afraid it's deeper than that.  And I don't want to fall into the mistake I did three years ago, where I stay around even though everyone knows I should be gone.  If I was so sure of this, I'd say something, but I'm not at all sure that this isn't just me being paranoid and sensitive, so I don't want to say anything or cause alarm.

I think what I'm looking for in all of these attempts to torture myself with the past is simply an excuse to fight for this again.  Because I feel like that's gone, and maybe I'm slowly slipping away with it as well.  And I don't want to, because this is good and makes me happy.  I think I've lost it entirely now...

*N.B. Credit will be given if the original author of the phrases which began this post would like.  On that note, my apologies to this individual.  For many, many things, the least of them being the use of the phrases at hand in this context.