Is there a real life?  I know others have lived one.  I do not know how they found it, though.  Was it a chance opportunity which presented a new trajectory for life, an illness that unveiled another door, a blockage which redirected the flow?  Or was there an irrepressible urging, unknown even to the one being urged, a force that in most lives never finds its freedom, which in one life did?  Sometimes real life seems to happen as the result of a choice, and sometimes it seems to never happen, no matter how much you try to choose it. 

Well, what's wrong with that?  I mean, there's been some things in my life -- like the longings I harbored for a straight boy or two when I was in high school -- longings which, if satisfied, would have left me terrified and dumb.  Indeed, on occasion those romantic longings might have been satisfied had I not been paralyzed by the prospect.  So maybe the longing is not so bad; it seems I may have chosen to continue the longing instead of accepting the longing's resolution.  But that's disingenuous.  The longing is bad if, out of fear, it becomes artificial and insincere -- a refuge from that which is ostensibly longed for.  If I choose to remain in the wilderness at the city's edge, though I profess to be on a quest for civilization, then I am lying.  And lamentable. 

So why am I afraid of the inspiration that lies dormant within me?  Why am I afraid to emerge? 

Lately, I have buried myself within an excess 40 pounds of cover.  I must be getting uncomfortably close to the edge of my wilderness.