Refresh

To renew To freshen, cleanse Start over When a page in a browser gets stuck or screws up, It’s the button you click to make everything right When you’re tired, It’s what you do to yourself to wake up, to stay energized When something’s old, It’s what’s done to make it new again Reviving something that’s dying Finding something that should not have been lost in the first place Inducing trial to create triumph Coal is crude Rough Dark Covered with dust of old But without pressure, heat, stress It cannot become a diamond. Without cutting, trimming, scraping, chipping, The diamond will never be set in a necklace, On a ring worn proudly on someone’s finger, Framed in a museum and named Hope. Without dealing with the heat, the pressure, Without using that heat and pressure to change The coal will never realize its worth Its potential If you put wilted lettuce in distilled water, It swells up. It keeps swelling Until it bursts. Is the lettuce dead? No; simply free, unbound. That might be good for the lettuce. Shedding its old form and embracing something new Being different than it was before When you’re driving on the highway, You can only move forward. If you move backwards, look backwards, It could prove fatal. Looking back might prevent you from looking forward ever again No more pictures Art is restrictive Pictures are bound to a canvas And colors can only describe so much Pictures can only be pictures They can’t be emotions; they can’t feel Only life can feel I’ve been so stupid. So blind So ignorant So idiotic. I’ve been resisting the fire The fire that will release the diamond inside me that everyone else sees, But that for stupidity sake I am choosing not to accept Reason why? No; just stupidity, stubbornness and ignorance. The things that are fucked up with my life They’re not doing anything to me; I keep going back to them, Paying more attention to them than they deserve. I’m failing at moving on from failure And I am choosing to let the vortex of failure’s guilt suck me back in and keep me down Addictions are bad – there are none that help anything But when I always feel like something’s wrong with me– Even when everyone else who matters says that I’m fine– Then that means that a bigger problem lies underneath. An addiction to perfection? A distorted sense of perfection or acceptability? An addiction to over-sanitizing every aspect of my life, like Emma, to the point where I’d die if I didn’t have Clorox wipes? A deadly, consuming addiction that must end before I lose myself Boiling a pot of food on a stove is fine. If that pot gets a bit wild, it’s still ok. But the problem exists when the pot spills over, And all the gook inside ends up in a mess all over the stove, the floor All over the things holding up the pot, Giving it support. I let my boiling pot of misapplied inadequacies spill onto the floor, All over the one thing (or one of the few things) that supported me And the fact that I let that happen is wrong. I keep stabbing the heart of the person I know I love. Instead of making this the best time of his life, I’m making it the hardest, the most awkward. I think we’re taking a step forward, but somehow it ends up as two steps back. I try to hit the gas and drive forward, But I just end up spinning the tires. The tires are trying to tell me. The evidence they give is plain to see, right in front of me. Put on the brakes; stop. Put my foot on the gas gently, and DRIVE. Let the wheels get a grip on the road, So I can finally start steering and taking control of this car. If I want to get somewhere, I have to change the way I’ve been driving, Because obviously there are things about it that need adjustment. I want to bake the best cake possible. Issue: I started with too much flour in the bowl. Making the cake is not impossible; it just means that I have to work a little harder. Ok, so what there’s extra flour? That just means the cake will be bigger – a fact that it’s time for me to get used to I just need to take a deep breath, and add the extra sugar, the extra butter, the extra eggs. I might have to mix a little longer, a little harder. The cake might have to bake a little longer than I planned firsthand. But it will bake, and when it comes out the oven, it’ll be better than the original. The recipe will have been refreshed, made anew, improved. Restart. Reassess. Revamp. Repeat attempt. I can do this. He believes in me, that I can. And he’s been telling me all along that it’s time I believed in myself. He took a leap of faith, and it looked like he was walking on water. What I didn’t see was the glass that really supports him. It isn’t magic; I was just a bit blind and clueless. I wasn’t really seeing what was there. But he opened my eyes. Now it’s time for me to trust in myself like he does Time for me to walk on the glass And take myself into my hands, And make the best of it. No more victim No more “turn-off”ing doubt and uncertainty No more fear I’m closing my eyes And jumping in to the pool. He says I can swim, so I’m going to try it out I think I can swim. But if it ends up that I can’t, he says he’ll be right there in the water with me, ready to help. And in case I didn’t know it, he’s Superman in almost every sense And I know he wants us both to get through this. And we will, On his strength AND on mine.