What will land for me?
I have no idea what to write.
Have not thought about writing (more than my diary) in nearly two years (!)

I have lived fully.
Read a novel about domination and color and ‘ohana.
Listening daily to news-comedy, now there is nothing left to laugh about.

I felt the exuberant heat of summer days, pushing and feeding my container-held vegetables until they could feed me.

Felt the pleasant coolness of my daylight basement room by day, and shivered there at night.
One single room that I have slept and worked and exercised and wept and loved and rested in for three and a half months now.

I have breathed in smoke too many days. Translucent prison bars, insidiously, inescapably infiltrating my throat, cutting back my range of motion.

Relief of late October rains - so late this year! - washing away the fire.
Replacing it with sweet and pungent wafts of rotting leaves.

Cats moving indoors. Scratching at doors, begging for companionship.

I have returned from a visit with family. Worn out, defeated, helpless, enraged.
So. helpless. Cannot. speak. up. Cannot. speak. truth.
Bowled over, swept under, the rug. of other’s self-focused stories.
Slid at me so quick, I am tangled before I know it, stumbling over words not my own as my mind freezes in defenseless surprise.

Still surprised? That many people are this way?
I should know by now.
I should know how to not care by now.
How to brush it off. by now.
Or defend myself. by now.
Be authentic. confident. articulate - the self that I aspire too. I thought I’d got closer to. I had practiced and read and studied to.

Gone. 
Unfindable.
Buried under the rubble of my high ideals and paper-thin shields against the world.

—
I am walking. Cooking. Watching. my thoughts. 
Petting the cats. Searching for laughter.
Waiting. for change.

Becoming reminded that there have been insights before.

Feeling and moving and waiting my way. into a freer me.