Mental Condition, At The Crossroads

In my youth there were periods I lived with many people. As a small child I was a single child. Later, my mother took in my cousin, a girl a year and a couple months younger, two grades behind. I was in sixth and she in fourth grades. Knowing there was a boy in the family, I had hoped for him, but I did not of course know some difficult realities about all that. I do okay with people and now after all the years of marriage, I have been single with people living in the house and not. I am okay alone, but it's different now. In my back yard I rent a separate building studio apartment, now for over a year to an old friend who also wishes alone time often enough. And for the last 25 plus years I have had the fellowship of AA.

Alone, not alone. Which is better?

Mental Condition

I seek constantly
For companions, having found
Beyond all questions
That I am no true hermit,
That I am in a bad place
Alone with my mind
Which talks to me so non-stop
I can't get me in.

Kept from my own mind,
Living the foolish results,
I seek light in friends.
But then when friends speak
And it's worse than my voices,
Small understanding,
Then I sit alone
And practice to get my head
To quiet down some.

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I am not in relationship with God to have a placid life. I didn't get into this thing clean and deep in me is a spur, a goad. I need to argue, wrestle, roll around in the dirt with Him. It doesn't matter I'll lose. I'm like the too small man who always fights the bigger guys in this holy arena. But there is something to this. I don't think He wants kids. I think He wants stand up hearts and souls, people mature enough to look Him square in the eye. And I don't think He wants any of us to come home until we all do. No one left behind. That's the rallying cry in the war zones. It feels right there. It feels right here too.

At The Crossroads

I'm at the crossroads
But one path requires great wings
That will lift me up.

I regret no wings.
So many attempts to change,
To reshape my life.

I demand new holy skin.

(What do you think this gets me?)