and my mind is on fire

"today i grew eight inches and three years in my mind, because i am sick of having so much to learn. you told me i was born yesterday, and i told you that made me a virgin. my mind is on fire and your hair feels like papyrus and my mind is on fire and my mind is on fire"
mama said by ~eaglewarrio9

I am growing and not in any particular direction. Just growing and branching out into things, then retracting when I am unhappy with what I find. I don't like people touching me, except for hugs. I stress over everything and don't move to fix the things I stress over, or else I do and then I stress that what I've done wasn't the solution the situation needed. I worry about money constantly. I don't spend money unless with friends, but once with friends my money is as good as gone. My friends all have more money than I do. Most of them have jobs and/or driver's licenses. I have neither, and though both are on the list of things to do, it seems like something I will struggle with, for some reason or another. I worry that I don't have a good enough resume to be hired. I worry that my blind eye will cause me to be in accidents, or else that I won't be allowed to get my license because of it.

I worry that I am not good enough to graduate from college, or that I won't be good enough to get into a master's program for creative writing, or that we can't afford for me to go to a master's program, or that I will reach my limit with writing and I will grow tired. My writing feels stagnant lately. I can tell when something I've written is useful when compared to things that are just experimental, but I can't tell if useful is good, or if it's even helpful, or if it's something I could reasonably send to publishers. There have been a few poems I've known in my gut to be really good. But I can't send those to publishers until I know whether or not they're shortlisted for a poetry competition I've entered. I doubt they will be, considering how my imagination is going crazy over it. The more I dream of winning, the more I'm sure I didn't win, and so by now I'm fairly sure I didn't get shortlisted. However, results are not until April 30th, and so I have to be patient. And worry. Ten more days.

I am growing tired of the internet, for some strange reason. I don't know why, but part of me knows that I am not prepared for the world yet, and the internet is my umbilical cord to my childhood. It is that part of me that is not responsible for the things I don't enjoy, but rather fully involved in the things I want to be involved in. Which is strange, because in that regard I am okay with life. I am fine with a menial job, no need for excess striving to achieve in the business front. So long as I can get by fairly comfortably, I am content.

But I don't know how long I would be content with that, and I know deep down I really want to succeed as a writer. But in knowing I want that, I know I'm terrified of what could go wrong. I don't expect my fears to stop me, but I do expect my fears to be right, which is what makes this so hard. I'm constantly afraid that I'm going to get somewhere down the line and realize that I'm incapable of being good enough. Sure my stuff is decent. Sure I enjoy it. But if it's not good enough...

lately my writing has become what defines me, even though I do other things. If writing doesn't work out, I honestly don't have a fallback point. It's this or obscurity. I'm trying not to be pessimistic. But the more I learn the more I fear there is nothing to be done about my potential mediocrity.

I think I've said more than I meant to, and in less of a way than I'd have liked. Ah well.