This one isn't to analyse
This one isn't to question
Or to worry

It's to appreciate what you've given me
Because I doubt I'll ever feel I've shown it enough

Life was harder before you turned up of course
Though I lived optimistically, I had my pains
Old baggage that pounded my spine with pressure
And habits that clogged my rationality

I worked through it, pushed towards the person I want to be
Intent on constructing myself in my ideal image
But I knew deep down that I would work that much harder
If I had someone to work for

What I didn't know was how amazing a person that someone would be
What a reassuring blessing I would receive
Just by offering that person dinner

I feel.. light
Empowered
Ambitious
And reassured
But most of all I'm not sure I deserve how easy everything is now

If I brought you all the world's flowers
It's money, it's chocolate and wine
And build you a record breaking skyscraper
By the labour of my hands

I would still short change you
For what you've given me

Thank you

Contentment is perhaps, not something to be perpetual
Rather, as the hedonic treadmill sinks our feet into splintered mud
Before releasing them as we patter into a welcoming sea
We find contentment to be.. given when we aren't looking for it

Like love, perhaps.

I should talk about her, shouldn't I
This one who fills me with ambition and confidence as the man I am now
And a creeping fear, that her sight of the man I was
Would undo the foundations, bring me back down to insecurity

But then.. I know that's not true.

She asks to see everything
Not knowing how the floodgates bulge
A history of positive and negative extremes
That I still have trouble looking at with clarity
Or without the wounds unclosing

Yet...
I know if she sees it all
Clutching my hand, with honest open eyes
And a heel breaking the hinges towards a reveal

She may be angry with me
She may pity me
Or find reasons to question me further

But
I can trust her
I can let myself be me with her
Even if I don't quite know what that means

As I boil out into the sand and let go of productivity
In this strange solace of words where I look inward
With eyes warmer and more rational than I've had before

I know she is the reason this is all easier,

She is the reason to be more,

So.. when I'm able,

I'll show her who I was.

Let's take a few days I said
Day one those eyes still impose in memory
But space is good to know what's what
Gives me a chance to write how I feel

There's a mess of feelings around you
As you clatter my routine out of shape
Change the flavour of the tea in my cup
And insist on a stretch of the legs
You know I want too

This relationship is a fresh scent in the air, true
A tangling of warm fun and playfulness
Along with deeper dissection as we pick apart our pasts
But there's something I wonder about sometimes
Something that worries me

I've kept the house of cards growing through paper triangles
Wondering whether it would ever bubble into gold
When you wander in the way of everything
I'm ready to drop it all for lightest brush of skin
Yet the house should grow for you

You seem to guide my ambition
There was a desire before, a boom and bust emotion
But you lull it into consistency, emphasise it's value
Something that becomes all the more daunting
If it's something I fail

As I try to temper the teenager who wants to touch you
With the steadfast soldier, whose desire it is to build our castle
I start to see the balance, a tranquility to my mirror image
One that you've sent exciting and scary ripples through

Such change you've made, and we've only just started
Where have you been?

It's so strange to be so happy right now
With adversity's bruises and cuts still burning
And old broken bones still aching through
Yet I have found clarity again
In this journey of fixing mirror cracks
Clarity gives me a lot of joy

I've been a self saboteur you see
An angry pressured worker
Pushing the rock up the hill
Wondering why it keeps falling down

I didn't understand love
Bigger and smaller
Momentary and perpetual
For what it was

I've seen love as a task
Something to be stressed over
To be controlled and analysed
To be distrusted and fought
And to torture myself over
When it disappeared

Love is not a task
It's a flow
Something natural, warm
Fun and carefree
Something to be accepted as possible
But allowed to pour where it should

I've met a lot of girls over the years
And I've gone in with the task in mind
The stress of
'Will I be successful in the task this time?'
And so I fail in the task that isn't a task again

When I've really found something fun and special
Is when I haven't working the task
When I've let myself swim in the flow with another
In conversation and dance
In revelry and smiles
In warm bed sheets I've never seen before

I know it's strange to be so joyful from pain
It's just...

I can learn to trust the flow now I can see it
So... I feel a little bit free right now

And so, here I am again
Self assessing
Deconstructing before

Getting the lines right on the self portrait
The colours, muscles and motion
And more importantly the mechanisms
Are clearer

When I remember what's important
My eyes aren't weighed down with disaster
Just contemplative with perspective in mind
It's okay that certain things aren't there just yet

I know ******* myself has been my normal
And the tangled ropes still need to be untied
I know my biology is challenging
And certain truths will always stay true

But thankfully, I can reassure you
The people who deserve echoing of smiles
I know my target is the framework
I know the paradox of the problem that isn't a problem
And I know that compassion creates motion more than anything else

To my wing men, don't push me to fly into those strange eyes
If I feel I can I will
To my observers, don't presume my challenges
I'm often a few moves ahead of you
And to my worried
Don't fear for my happiness
I'm doing too well not to be grateful

What to touch on now..

I could explore the clash of release
And the continued pressure that comes with it
Where openness and strength
Seem at odds and intrinsic

A strange little paradox there
What can I say for the connotations
That breach quietly into life
Hidden *** notes in the song

I notice one thing when I'm not self involved
As can be true of all of us
There's a new adversity
Adversity without adversity in that sweet little irony

As safety and security become thematic
As the glaring tunnel vision of problems disperses
We are faced with stagnation
And the new guilty challenges it provides

The hedonic treadmill
The thirst for more
The guilt of less in others
And discontentment, when we should know better

Though adversity can be intrinsic to me
Though my growth has created colourful threads
I still empathise as I sit in sameness
And burst out of it with the need for more

Because we aren't meant to sit still
We have legs for a reason

How do I express how this feels..

Returning from adversity self imposed
From a dissatisfaction of my results perhaps
Or a sense of stagnancy
Or the clock not giving me what I want

There was old scars too, with emotion ebbing underneath
Strange how such sugar coating
Should taste so bitter in hindsight
At the old image such interconnections showed
Maybe the stain wasn't so vivid in her eyes

The week was hard
I worked hard despite the need to not to do anything at all
Each time I dragged myself away I gave myself a trivial little gift
But it was hard to keep it all in

I opened myself, just enough, to a friend
When another couldn't be there
The prowd man didn't want to, thought it weak
And he could have handled it on his own
But maybe he realises something
That he doesn't deserve pain anymore

As I see the subtle nuances of the return
Smiles from friends silently concerned
And my confidence flow in the face of juvenile *****
I'm reminded of the strength I've earned

Sometimes I fall under old truths of self
Aspects that may always be there to glue my feet
But now, with these new eyes
This new sculpture of a man
And the depths of my mind, tongue and brush
Flowing so freely
The old truths fit in a greater landscape

One where strength
And more importantly optimism
Prevails