For insight into me, A paper-journal post...

Cirque Du Soleil is one of the crowning points of human beauty, fitness and inspiration. They always awe me, make me wish that I was one of them despite the obvious reasons why I never could be.

I never could be because, at almost nineteen years of age, my legs move beneath my like I have Parkinson's and my hands are growing weaker with every day that I open my eyes upon how beautiful this world still is to me. My joints are suffering, despite my having slowed my movements and toned down the daily exercises of walking from building to building and standing up to ward off boredom. My right knee and ankle refuse to take any shocks or abuses, including me hopping over a two inch tall ledge. Stairs are no longer a good idea, they make my entire body shake and pivot in weird directions. My wrists are very strong, just as good as they have always been, but my fingers and palms are letting me down - fingers dislocating at the joints closest to the nails, or otherwise not allowing me to hold my pen for more than two minutes without either dropping it or having to change the way or hand with which I am writing. I can't have that... Writing is my life. Without it, I might crumble.

Ultimately, though... I will not crumble. I will adapt, as I have always adapted. No matter what is wrong surrounding my body's ability to function as it usually has, no matter what is standing in my way this time, no matter who tries to tell me I wont make it (even if that person is myself), I know that I will. I am a survivor of a million and one shipwrecks. I have come to tell my tale. And whether it can no longer be written, or my words pour from my pen like rain, that story will be told. Eventually. When I am ready. When it is complete. And that story is far from complete now. I can feel it. Every day, I can feel it in me - the ability to just stop breathing in my sleep. And I can tell when I'm not ready. And every day so far, despite how bad it has been, I haven't been ready. And I won't be ready. Not for years. And I certainly won't go silently. I will go with an explosion of passion and life that tells the whole world "I'm ready to go, and you will be okay when I am gone. That's a promise." Until I can fulfill that promise, I'm stuck to this world like it's own naked skin. I guarantee you that.

I'm almost nineteen years old and my body thinks it's time to go... My mind and my body have always been very separate beings. My body thinks it's getting decades and decades older than it is. It thinks it might be approaching it's 70s. I can feel that. My back is always sore in ways it didn't used to be, arthritic ways of constant inflammation. My left eye is simultaneously getting worse and getting better - worse in that there is always a headache, redness or incredible itch in or behind it now; better in that it is adapting to life in darkness - my blind spot is much bigger, the rest is colorless and grey, but I know how to purport myself as though I can see everything clearly. I have dizziness and vertigo that are not caused by any sort of blood sugar deficit because they happen at random times when I am completely still, and never when I am standing from sitting, or sitting from lying. I thought that the bus I was on yesterday was rolling backward three times when it was staying completely still at a stop light. I have nausea when I eat or drink too much and I'm sleeping far too much and far too little in alternates. Fatigue, muscle spasms, my neck is very stiff when I tilt my head down or to the left (painfully so). I have the urge to move (as in to walk for miles and miles and never stop), but no physical ability to do it anymore. My body parts fall asleep at random moments, sometimes when pressure is on them, sometimes when they sit still for too long, sometimes in the middle of use. All of these things get worse the hotter it gets outside.

But you know what, that's okay! I have my rambling record of my bodily woes, just in case they all come out to mean something in the end, but I don't mind. Whether I can use my body at all, or not, does not influence my ability to perceive greatness, variety, beauty in this world and in the people in it. Don't get me wrong, I know the extent to which there is evil in this world. But I also know that I refuse to see only that part of the cloud - I refuse only silver lining or black void filled with rain without also perceiving that it is lightning that makes the lining shine and lightning kills. Or water that fills the cloud, and water nourishes all of life on this planet. The only planet we have.

Nothing is ever what it seems. Never is a thing only a thing - it is multifaceted, multicolored, hiding itself, always. I believe that. And I try to see it all.