06/10/2026: I Feel Like . . .

I feel like a puzzle piece that got lost at the vacation cabin, collecting dust until the next summer when the family returns and discovers I’m missing and doesn’t bother to find me, and either leaves the puzzle incomplete or doesn’t bother to put it together at all. I feel like the last autumn leaf, destined to wither away alone on the creaking branches of a bare tree in a freezing cold wind. I feel like a flower that, despite all odds, bloomed through the sidewalk crack, on a well-traveled path where people have no regard for the little sprig of life they walk on and overlook on their way to live their lives. 

I feel like the one fish who constantly gets thrown downstream, forced to work twice as hard to catch up to my counterparts who were born to thrive together in a like-minded group. I feel like the looming gray cloud in the sky that everyone looks upon with foreboding and dread, cursing me for concealing the warmth of the sun and robbing them of their beloved light. I feel like the tree who unconditionally gives and gives until she has nothing left, forgetting somewhere along the way that she also matters and deserves love, but who will always give and expect nothing in return because it’s just in her nature to be that way. 

I feel like the last few sips of coffee that grow cold and get rewarmed until there’s nothing but bitterness left. I feel like the grains of sand in an hourglass, cursed to be confined in a perpetual state of falling one way and then another over and over again, inside someone else’s construct of a naturally occurring thing. I feel like the bruised goods that are buried at the bottom of the crate, waiting to be discarded with the rest of the rejects at the end of the market day. I feel like a wallflower who has nothing to say, nothing to contribute to the party as I wish to slowly fade into the background. I feel like I care so much that it actually ends up being to my dismay and detriment, surrounded by people who don’t understand, who don’t want to feel that deeply, or just don’t see things in the same way I do. I feel like I’m supposed to prove something to the world, but that the thing they want to see is something that goes against everything I am, and therefore something I can never give.

I feel like I’m aimlessly searching for that person to find the missing puzzle piece, to put it where it fits. I feel like I’m waiting impatiently for the springtime of my life where I’m not the one and only leaf, where warmth and happiness fill my passing days. I feel like defiantly claiming my small but rightful place as that little flower in the pavement, shouting to the heavens that I deserve to be there. I feel like going with the flow of the water as that floundering fish in order to actually go against the current of the norm, the seeming path of least resistance but the most lonely and difficult one compared to the path that the rest of the fish are on, working together to survive but not truly live. I feel like raining down on the earth from my dark cloud and demanding that the world see me for the beautiful and resilient thing I am, an unrelenting force that can wash myself clean of my burdens and my mistakes and make the sunshine all the sweeter for the darkness I endured. 

I feel like giving up all my fruit, all my branches, and even the trunk of my tree if it means providing for the people I love, because I know that this loyalty and devotion is precisely what they love about me, and I know that the ones who truly care will always repay me in kind. I feel like bursting through that ceaselessly rewarmed coffee mug, screaming “no more” as I flood the keyboard and stain the office desk and floor, as well as the person’s crisp white shirt who deigned to refresh me only to leave me to grow cold again. I feel like shattering the hourglass that is my prison on a faraway beach, so that I can be carried off on the tide to live a life where I’m unapologetically and blissfully free, lost in the ebbs and flows of the sands of time at long last. 

I feel like, if I have to be bruised goods, that I’d very much like to be aged into a fine wine, one with notes of wisdom and, despite my hardships and shortcomings, a sweetness that is unique and forgiving of the bitterness that may linger. I feel like beckoning to the milling crowd to take a step back and fade into the wallpaper to create a beautiful garden of introverts and progressive thinkers on the boundaries of the party, where together we can be admired for being different. I feel like, even though it hurts like hell to press on these days, that if I stopped caring now I would hurt everyone I love, myself most of all. I feel like I have so much to offer, but that none of it will ever be enough to satisfy the game masters that run the gambit of life that I’m reluctantly bound to for the sake of money, hollow praise, and survival. 

In the span of a second, I can easily flip the “I’m loved, I’m destined for great things, and I’m fulfilled” narrative in my head so I feel completely and utterly lost, alone, and unfit to have my own seat at the table. I struggle as I wonder how both can be true at any given moment.