Lockdown

Life gives us choices. You either grab on with both hands and just go for it, or you sit on the side-lines.
My utter fearlessness pushing me to choose the casual bravado,
but my existential angst is leaning towards the subsidiary.
In the morning,
albeit  bright and propitious,
When I wake up,
There are those few nerve-shattering dreamlike seconds before I realize where I am,
And then I do realize,
And I can not breathe,
And I want to cry,
You will never know how many muffled slow-moving tears have fallen on this guileless face.
I think I have moved beyond stress,
to something more deeply disturbing.
I could be brusque and impatient,
But I found camaraderie among the discontent.
I might be a capricious,
But I am often envisioned by the prognostication.
I run one hand through my hair,
further dishevelling it.
I have equivocated too often in the past,
Maybe because I did not want to be entirely understood.
I think I am holding on too tightly,
As to my shadowy and menacing mystery to never be unsolved,
I chose what to gently unravel with fastidious care,
Avoiding the sense of making something too esoteric.
It is a grey area,
I am trying to figure out how to finagle this,
At the same time without being too exposed.
My idiosyncratic thoughts control me,
Insidiously infiltrating my behavior.
The thing about reality is that is it is still waiting there,
Waiting for you the next morning.
But it is a new sunny day,
And I have work I am trying to malinger.
As I am reading through this personal mantra,
Not having reached satisfaction with it,
I became a mercenary.
I am scared that I am not myself,
And I am scared that I am.
I drank myself into oblivion,
Believing that was the panacea.
I almost always behaved with the utmost propriety,
But I have also been tempted with immorality.  I have been treated as a social pariah,
Perhaps no one will understand me.
It is not, ultimately, that important.
I can control my passions and emotions,  If I can understand their nature.
Just because I do not understand something,
Does not mean it is wrong.
Not everyone deserves to know the real you,
I can not always promise to be the man of refreshing candor.
My admission came after years of circumlocution,
When I finally learned how to break down those drafts.
But those words can hardly be construed as an apology,
Nor it was intended to be noticeably discomfiting.
I lay my head on different pillows,
And I wake up the next day,
But the enervate slightness of my frail form is still there,
As if I did not sleep at all.
I wonder if there was a way to shut this tireless brain off,
Asking that question was the nadir of my existence.
Maybe I am too obdurate to change,
Perhaps I am not designated to fit in society's paradigm.
I gulp down the last of my bitter coffee,
Further aggravating my chronic insomnia.
I try to write, as always, in pellucid prose.
But I can not escape my phlegmatic character.
I guess they were wrong;
Life is not about creating yourself,
It is about finding yourself.