I wonder, as a ramble, if everyone feels the way I do.
If everyone at some point anyway, stands in the middle of their world and just looks at the rest of life going on. Alone.  Visible, yet invisible. Like you are screaming at the top of your lungs but there's not a sound and people just keep on moving. Wrapped up in their business and their troubles that go unnoticed, too.

Or,  I wonder if I've been standing knee deep in disaster and everyone has always seen that except me. Oblivious to the sinking sand I'm in, clueless that I'm slowly drowning. It's just part of my identity that people aren't even shocked by because it just has always been that way.

It's a strange place. I don't know whether to accept it, fight it, embrace it. My place that is in this world.

I go from choking down anxiety until I literally feel the pain radiate from my heart into my lungs and then through my body - to cautious laughter but never reckless abandon.  I keep it carefully measured. I have found that the very best mask is a smile. Though I'm sure I must look like a fool no one really seems to notice that everything in me is whispering "just die to self".  Because if I can achieve that, if I can really hand myself over, nothing can shake me the way that it does.

It's all too complicated now to unwind. I believe in healing and total restoration on the other side of eternity and I doubt it is worth the effort to even try it here. It is worth it to pursue the eternal. It all just hinges on that, doesn't it ? Which makes us really all equals both here and there. Each of us fighting to survive in a world we don't even belong in to achieve the same reward, the same status, the same glory.

And in that I find my value, my purpose, my freedom.... myself.