When your best just isn't good enough.

Some mornings, its really hard to get up and get out of bed knowing what you have to face.  Occasionally sleep provides you a few hours of sanctuary, where you can hide from the demons you must battle every, single day.  The darkness of sleep masks the darkness of your days, and for a short amount of time you feel normal- for at night, its dark for everyone. 

But when you do have to force yourself out of bed, bypassing the mirror to head straight for the coffeemaker, the sheer act of admitting another day’s dawn has arrived is enough to zap you of every ounce of energy, every shred of willpower that you might have been able to muster up while everything was dark.

You force yourself through all-too-common routines, dreading just about everything in that bright, shiny world out there.  You feel like a dull copper penny- the ones that no one picks up after they’ve fallen on the ground, for what good is such a small amount of change?  Why bother pick yourself up when there is so little left inside that empty shell you’ve become?

Once in a while you can fight through the heaviness of heart and mind, you can smile at people to fool them into believing that everything inside that head of yours is tranquil and normal.  But far too often you can’t, and the weight of feeling powerless is just too much to bear.

The feeling that you are alone, and not included... the kind of feeling you get in your gut when you approach a group which immediately falls silent as you pass, then bursts into laughter when they think you’ve walked far enough away... the feeling you get when everyone around you has you convinced that whatever it is that you can do isn’t good enough for them- aren’t you tired of hearing people yell at you? Scold you? Demean you? Make you feel like you aren’t any good?

Of course you are.  But what else is left to do, but admit defeat and walk away with your eyes cast downward?  At least you have the solitude of darkness, the cloaking blanket of invisibility that can cover you and absorb your tears and your fears, for one more long, lonely night.