Afraid

I do get scared sometimes about what I write about

Sometimes I wonder if it’s too vulgar

Too raw

Sometimes I wonder if it isn’t beautiful enough

If it’s too heavy 

If it’s too depressing

Sometimes I doubt if it is good enough to post

Or I’ll get nervous about what you’ll think about it

And sometimes I’ll go back and delete something 

If it reveals too much about a friend

Or if it’s basically porn

But mostly

I don’t have a filter

Mostly

I pride myself on being a ‘fearless writer’

Never scared to explore the difficult things in life

Never scared to point out hypocrisy 

Never scared to call out our society 

Never scared to examine myself

Fearless

Like a fighter

Like Hemingway

Like Charles  Bukowski

Like Dostoevsky 

Like Melville

Like Orwell

Like Huxley

Like Rand

Like Shelly

I thought that I could do it . . .

I thought I could be fearless when creating

But it’s not true

I get scared these days

I don’t get as drunk as I used to

I am not as lost

Not as broken as I used to be

I explored the darkness

And now my eyes are a little darker for it

I held up a mirror

And what I saw was my fears

And my lies

And my meaning

And my beliefs

And my pain

And my past

And my future

And then the mirror broke

And my fears escaped

And became shadows on my white walls

Whispering doubt to me

And my reflection now

Doesn’t look like me anymore

The more I care about this

The more afraid I get of it

And I am starting to care quite a bit 

No, I am not fearless

I am afraid

All the time 

About everything

I just get too high to notice most days.

CH 2/23/24