Quiet fire.

​I don’t like where I am.  I don’t know where I want to be, but I know it’s not here.  But I also think I have to be here in order to get there.

It’s the weirdest feeling, the one that’s trapped inside me.  It’s like a small fire that burns the back of my throat and I can’t extinguish it no matter how much water I drink.  It likes to tickle my tonsils and creep into my head.  On really bad days, it will drop big, heavy embers that land in my stomach with a splash.  Some days, I want nothing more than to put out that fire.  To be content in where I am and satisfied with what I have accomplished.  But on other days, I want to blow it up.  I want to swallow gasoline or alcohol or any other flammable substance in reach and let the fire blaze, let it take me places I won’t let myself imagine.  I don’t know how to do either of these things.

I think I want to call this feeling ‘empty.’  But that is such a misleading word because when I feel empty, I feel anything but.  It feels like those simmering embers stuck in my throat are so hard and so hot and so there.  Just wanting to be noticed.  Wanting me to know there isn’t anything I can do about them.

Sometimes I think maybe love will fix the burning.  I need someone to blow out my fire and soothe this passion that’s caged in my heart. But who wants a burning woman? Fire will catch anything I touch.  And no one wants that.  And those who try, don’t give me what I need.  Because I don’t even know what I need and honestly, that is the hardest part.

That’s why I want to put the fire out.  I want to stomp on the flames that make me different, that make me want something that doesn’t exist.  I want to smile blissfully and ignorantly and be happy with a lukewarm heart.  I want to be okay with being lukewarm.  

But I’m not.

I want flames. I want destruction.  I want anger and lust and passion so unbearable it rips through my chest like a phoenix from the ashes.  And that is so fucking cheesy.  That doesn’t even exist if I wanted it to.  People don’t like passion, they are happier being lukewarm.  And so, I guess I will be unhappy.

Sometimes I think maybe if I move away, I’ll find whatever I need to fuel or quench my fire.  But where do I go? What city, what state, what country, what universe do I need to inhabit in order to put out whatever the hell is going on inside of me? That’s why I think I have to be here.  I think I have to do this, to put up with this, in order to get there.  At least that’s what I’m telling myself.  

I don’t know how much longer this will work because I just fucking want more, and I have no idea how to get it.  I just don’t know.  So until then, I suppose I’ll be here, burning quietly to ash.