People and their talk, their stories. Their meanderings and their unwittingly genius insights. I take them all in. I listen. I nod. And secretly wish that I had their eloquence, their ways they can take words and make a masterpiece. The thinking of, “I never thought of that” comes to my mind more often than I want to admit. When they read their stories, I can’t help but gape in awe. They craft their words like dreamweavers, while I am hopeless and klutzy, fumbling with words I cannot say, let alone comprehend.
     

Envy and inferiority to the other writers and speakers cloud my judgement. It is nothing against them. The whole “It’s not you it’s me” thing comes along in my mind too, ready to defend me against the phantom antagonism I conjure in my head to match. People say it is human to feel that way, the jealousy...but I don’t like it. Why does it look and sound so easy for some when it is maddenly difficult for so many others? The world is not fair, echoes, but then again, I already knew that.

When I attempt to speak my ideas in say, a situation where, a-teacher-unexpectedly-calls on me-in-a-socratic-seminar-and-I-embarrassingly-jump- out-of-my-skin, it fumbles out, hardly what I really thought I wanted to coney. But what I try to base my words is usually only a scrap, after all. Idiot, blank faces, blank spaces...moving on. Blushing, red, fading in and out. What did I just say?
   

 Maddening...it is maddening, knowing that the ideas and fantasies that flit through my mind could’ve been something. But like shooting stars, the visions and snippets of dialogue fade and flash away as I write or try to voice my thoughts, the scenes, the stories, the characters, the symbols and meanings, getting lost in translation as I desperately try to grasp at the fading memory of ideas. Then nothing. That only makes my situation worse.
     

I can get angry and reckless, something people don’t really associate with me. But, don’t we all have layers? There is a mental teardown, a rip, rip, rip, and now look what I have done. My blank canvas...it’s already ruined and ravaged, torn up and crumbled by my own hand. Is there anything to tape, to glue, to scavenge, to remedy, to get from this mess? Some might say yes, and I say no.
   

 Lost...maybe if I didn’t think so much, I could’ve saved some of the ideas, the words, the...I don’t know. I usually don’t.
     

Melancholy. I am in a constant, tongue-tied, tip-of-my-tongue state, and it hasn’t changed. Thinking back to the time I used to write avidly, I ruefully stare at those memories. Can’t I go back to those times, when I had the drive, the inspiration? No, I cannot, I won’t. Those years were also my worst of times. Those years not too long ago, when I was more terrified than I am now, afraid of my own shadow and in constant guilt practicing self-deprecation day and night. (What’s to say that I still am?) I can’t go back. Not again. Never again.
     

There are times I wished I didn’t think too much. Maybe if I didn’t think too much, the barrier blocking the colorful imaginations and ideas would cease to exist, and I would finally be free to write. Free to speak, confident and happy that I can write something worthwhile. That hope fades away too. No one can ever, “not think,” in the literal sense. But I’m talking about the concept of “not thinking” where creativity is at its apex, when it’s just you and the words...that feeling of slipping, of total letting go (don’t you dare start singing that song), letting the words take you to the far-off places, the fantasies that you didn’t know you had in the back of your mind.
   

 I’ve never had that feeling. I say I do. That’s not the truth. I am constantly thinking, constantly judging my options and weighing them on a broken scale. This routine thinking throws me into a wall, barring and trapping and stopping me from seeking my full potential. And I let it throw me around, because deep down, I am afraid of running into the unknown. This fear may very well be the root of the bud. Or is it the thorn? The emptiness? The blankness? Huh, I got nothing. Nothing further, that is. No surprise there.