Inside
It’s quiet. Are you still with me?
Inside. I’ve been inside. Myself. My house. Both.
Okay, so I’ve been outside, too. The kids started baseball. That’s a lot. Even when I’m outside, I’m still inside. Inside myself.
I guess there’s reflection happening. There’s a lot of setting things aside (in the Theravada sense of that phrase). My mind escapes to other worlds, then, as it always has. I’m not schizoid or anything. But maybe I was? When I was a teen. They say you can’t outgrow or ‘cure’ personality disorders, but. No one knows, really. Besides, I had a lot of other problems, too, my deep fantasy life probably was the least of them.
Here we are, though, thirty-ish years later and still going in there. In and out there. Even when I go out there, I’m going in there, and then sometimes out there again, but still inside. Do you see what I mean? Do you do that, too?
I can’t hardly muster a fuck to give about my responsibilities. I see to them, dutifully, as always. But I really want little more than to be in bed reading or imagining that I am someplace in my mind. The outer world hasn’t had much on offer lately that I find the least bit appealing. There’s a kind of reassurance in knowing that things are going well enough that this is the level of problem I’m dealing with. There’s a slight melancholy in realizing that it’s still my main defense after all this time.
But inside I go and I dwell. It is the only real shelter.
Where are you?
