chasing cars.

I am not ready. I am not ready for life. School was easy. Not academically, necessarily. It was easy because I could accomplish tasks while putting off living my life. Life was after the completion of this mythical thing called "graduation." Then it came. And I am not ready.

People are leaving, gone, coming back, leaving again. Going to live in Iowa or Florida or NYC or Alaska or Texas or Indiana or Michigan or England. 370 miles might as well be 5000. It's all the same. Gone is gone is gone. Alone is alone.

I don't want new friends. I don't want more classes, more degrees. I don't want to move into a new apartment. I don't want to wake up from this in-between place I'm in. I don't want to live life the way everyone else does. I want to stay here in this Purgatory. I can hide and sleep and pretend and not be real. Real people breathe and smile and go to full time jobs, and they don't feel like the next friend who announces an impending move to Missouri might just kill them. Heart stops, breath dies, lump of lead settles in chest. I will stay here and not be real even though it might cripple me.

I am not ready. I am afraid. I am still the young child begging for help and not receiving any from anyone.

A 32-year-old woman named Deanna tells me that the things that weigh me down and keep me awake until 5 AM each morning are common for people with my history. She tells me that these things can be fixed, cured, put away forever. I want to believe her. I don't. But it's nice to pretend once a week that she's right, and that I might someday be ready. For everything.