As Vague as He is Flawed

Failed Poet said,
“I stopped taking my meds because I didn’t like the way they made me feel. I walked around like a zombie numb. What’s the point? I’d rather feel something, even if it’s anger, despair, irritation, sadness. I’m a poet I need the full range. That’s like taking away an artist’s paint and asking him to dip his brush into dishwater. How do you paint a sunset with dishwater? How do you write a poem if you can’t feel?

I slipped into that role easily the socially awkward, misunderstood, drunken loner. It fit snug. That’s the way they all were, I told myself, so I was like that. You can convince yourself of almost anything if you’re willing to sacrifice parts of yourself. It was a trap I see that now. But when you’re twenty, twenty-one, what do you know about traps?

Twenty-odd years later, the chickens have come home to roost.”

Encouraging Soul said,
“What matters is, did you do your best? Do the poems carry your integrity who you are?”

Failed Poet said,
“To me they’re just chatter. Nothing to do with reality.”

Encouraging Soul said,
“I carry a quote. About people who realize, bitterly, they can’t change the world that righteousness and idealism have limits:
‘By the end of his life, a new man emerges a man no longer interested in changing the universe, but devoted to enriching his corner of the world.’

It’s helped me. I struggle every day with anger. I ask God to work it out for me. I used to say, ‘I’m just keepin’ it real. If you don’t like it, I got no time for you bump you.’

I wasn’t angry at them. I was angry at myself at my choices. Internalizing labels. Being a people-pleaser. Afraid to say no. Submitting to men I had no business submitting to. Letting them make decisions I knew they weren’t capable of making, because I didn’t trust my own instincts even when they were right.

So I know about chickens coming home to roost.”

Failed Poet said,
“And a cliché becomes a cliché because, more often than not, it’s true.”

Encouraging Soul nodded as Failed Poet returned to the biggest myth in the history of myths.

The myth is this:

If you get hurt, you crawl off the field.