Oct. 25, 2004 @ 7:41 a.m.

The overwhelming feeling of being overwhelmed is overwhelming me again. Starting a new project, never seeming to finish, the dragging pull, the tugging and nagging. I can’t seem to accept that life is not a sprint. The fact that it, instead, is a marathon with an invisible end that results in evaporating, worldly death the millisecond your soul accidentally crosses it’s elegantly hidden red tape. I keep feeling like any second I’ll unintentionally pass through the invisible ending to my saga. Life has become not so unlike that of a soldier stuck in the past visions of horror from his earlier life. Standing in massive rice fields packed with limb-expending mines. The only thing to stop me from stepping on one is to hold still. To even sit down in order to change my submerged socks provides enough fear in me to think that the rotting flesh on my feet is better than no flesh on them at all. This fear invades me like a child in the dark with a burnt out night light, with something sharp and cold poking me in the back, as I close my eyes to hold back the screams, only it isn’t working. If I were sugar, I’d be melting. If I were coal, I’d be burning red hot. If I were a crayon, I’d be in a warm, circular puddle without the colorful label, but I am none of those things. My cloak of skin is holding me together, while my muscles anticipate the next required action impulse from my brain that just isn’t firing like a blown fuse on the circuit breaker somewhere down in central city. Someone flip my switch, please? I’ve lost my flashlight and fear stubbing my toe again.