Dear Mrsatroxi,

I always thought that getting older would make me harder.

I would become crystallized, caught in the amber of my youth. I would be able to say what I wanted without fear, wear what I wanted without caring, and never have to cry again.

Instead the opposite seems to have happened.

I have become much softer, mushier, if you will, and I cry all the time. I worry about what I say, if I look all right and my empathy knows no bounds.

I hate this about myself.

I despise the fact that I can put myself in your place so well that I am paralyzed by the fear of hurting you.

I hate the fact that my conscience will analyze what I have said or done and then bludgeon me with everything I have said or done poorly, starting with what I justed screwed up and running all the way back to when I was six and stepped on my doggie.

Couple all this with the fact that most have little, if not none, of the same regard for me, (and please do not think that I am telling you that you should, I wish I were more like you) and you will understand that this is a difficult way to live.

If more years continue to make this worse, I will not be able to leave the house.

and you probably could too.

So here you go!

Have a good day, folks.

I have always wanted to be a writer.

When you drop a bomb like that one, I guess you should follow up with an explanation.

A a small child, I tinkered with stories. Pap that makes me cringe now with skimming, which is all I can manage.

I wrote what I thought people would want to read, what I thought would make a good story. I thought it was good at the time. I thought I was a writer.

Now I don’t think that can be done in writing. I think you have to write for yourself.

Maybe what comes out will be lousy, but it will be Your lousy.

I read something once that said something like, Everyone has a book inside them. Some have good books, some have great books, and some have books that would make your eyes bleed, but a book nevertheless.

I have a book I want to write. I have wanted to write. I know it as well as I know myself, it changes and it twists and it spins but it is always there.

I go back to my past scribbles, and I say, not yet, not yet.

I am not old enough.

If I write it now, try to write it now, it will it might become as pathetic as my childhood babble, and then it will be lost to me.

It has been with me for so long I don’t know what I would do without it.

I am afraid.

If I can’t catch it…pin its wings to paper with ink…

What am I then?