My Quest to Adult

In 2 days I will officially be an adult whether I like it or not. At the ripe age of 26, I'll be thrown off of the ACA, which I've been benefiting from through my parents, and then placed neatly, or so I hope, into the healthcare provided by my employer.

The confines of legal adulthood have, thus far, shown a myriad of simplicities and complexities; though, I'd argue that, when thrown into a baking bowl, I'd most often find 2 parts of the former and about 10 parts of the latter, but I digress...

Speaking from a personal point of view, adulthood feels like the months or weeks leading up to a war-time battle overseas. At one moment, I'm perfectly fine: laughing with friends, running errands, doing laundry, etc. And the next, like an avalanche of thought that hits me all at once, the fact that I'm about to be in a life-or-death battle swarms around all of my other little, insignificant musings and smothers them as if they were never in existence. Am I a part of a big enough troop? Will there be enough rations for my own sustenance? Will I have enough ammunition to secure myself? Will there be enough cover on the battlefield for me to dodge the deadliness of seemingly relentless offensive strikes that will, most assuredly, demoralize and petrify? Am I going to die? Am I going to die? Am I going to die?

This analogy is my anxiety.

In a constantly changing world, a great support system, of which I have, is hardly enough to douse my burning mind, but that doesn't mean it's not helping. I'm not quite sure where I would be without my friends and family.

As an adolescent, success was aspired. Each bump or jump along the way, an F on a math quiz to an A+ in an honors Spanish test, was, for me, an easily-marked dot on the upward slope of my life graph. But now that I'm an adult, success is refracted sunlight hitting an otherwise dark cave. So long as I'm a dust particle floating in the line of the sunlight, I'm fine. In other words, so long as the success I have is continued, I'll be fine, but now that I'm practically "There," I realize so much could go wrong. One wrong move, and I'm out of the warmth of the light. Especially the things I can't even remotely control. Most of the time I'm able to let go of the things I can't control, but when those things are life events: work, growing older, ailing family, moving-because-I'm-a-grown-up-now-duh, my psyche goes haywire. It's frustrating, exhausting, and even nauseating. The things/events that I'm excited about and looking forward to are the same things/events that I'm afraid could get up and walk away/never happen.

Perhaps that's what this part of life is for: Becoming an adept war-veteran in life. That path has to start somewhere...

Right?

- PatInTheHat

The Equation

In essence

This isn't just another message

From the present

Time irrefutable

While math is in question

In essence

These leaders keep showing different colors

Iridescent

Blind in one eye

Lying every second

Sister, it's me

Sister, you see

This town is crumblin'

Washed out to sea

Sister, it's me

Sister, you see

The stars have stopped callin'

And it's all up to me

Condolence

For those that are lost

In translation

Facts irrefutable

Yet constantly in question

Condolence

For your life that's been tossed

To regression

Finding the lies

Not so intelligent 

Sister, it's me

Sister, you see

This town is crumblin'

Washed out to sea

Sister, it's me

Sister, you see

The stars have stopped callin'

And it's all up to me

- PatInTheHat

In Love, Falling

She wears a jewel watch
But not for the time

Moonlight used to navigate
Malleable melancholy men

A careless call to copy
Compliant cavalry killing

Unsuspecting victims
Eyes glinting of gold

Swore an oath to herself
To trust no one else

A wrist crux clasps
Together at the top

No bells in the distance
No awakening alert

Just the dark of the night
With an irreproachable breeze

A path of familiarity
In deceit of the men

A stride closer to her
Is a stride closer to death

She is hanging from a tree
With the help of a necktie

Over a dark-cloaked cliff
A hundred feet high

With forgotten time as the distance
Between life, love, and peril

- PatInTheHat

Amphitheater

A tuning orchestra
And rehearsed symphony

Not a snare
A crescendo tympani

A soft piano ballad
A boisterous trumpet

A heart-stringed harp
Along breath reeded

Fingers on Ivory's organ
Hair kissing strings

You are a xylophonic whisper
In a multitonic cavern

Each note a new color
Light piercing the rocks above

This is our theater
And you are the music

With our hearts
As the conductor

And only me
As the audience

-PatInTheHat

Slowly, In Reverse

Wrinkled hands

Caught

On cotton threads

Soaked

In water

The mind 

Teaches

The body how

To adapt in

A new environment

Involuntary

Evolution

Encompasses

Eternal

Change

But these wrinkles

Do not come from

The water

They come from

The age

We evolve

Only so long

As we

Are not

Dying

And then

Like a 

Cotton thread

We wither

Slowly

The thread
Sponges the water
And expels it
When wrung by
Crossed fingers

Promises
The heart
Makes
On behalf of
Chemical reactors

Until the
Reaction
Is just
The last
Beat

Life
Is just
One
Long term
Deceit

- PatInTheHat

And My Small Soldier

Mentioning a past demon
To a soft spoken
Small soldier
Wreaks internal havoc

I do not judge her size
As the strength of her heart
Beats ammunition into
The demon of my soul

The bullet holes released
The light from the darkness
The light I thought I lost
In a previous life

I fought the soldier as
She struggled to fight
The overbearing opaque world
That lived inside of me

The battle grew fierce
And the strength of her heart
Seemed to be winning
Until I helped the demon

With my shaking fingers
I closed each bullet portal
That she had created
In an effort to save me

And my small soldier began to break

The cracks of darkness from the demon
Spread like the fire in hell and
Fear spread to her
And the base of her troop

I became the demon
And the demon became me
The troop knew the way to
Defeat the darkness of the demon

Was to defeat me

__________

Time killed the demon
That once lived inside of me
But not before haphazardly
Spreading more of its evil

Destroying other soldiers

Invading other troop

__________

The one who looked hell
Straight in the eye
And battled until her heart
Couldn't take the pain anymore

My small soldier deserves more than an ode
Instead: a statue built to the sky
As a long over-due

Thanks to you

- PatInTheHat

Stress, My Cardio Path

Glass spills on the counter-top
The rest of what I've got

Cotton cloth caught calling
Monster molding more maladies

Drip

Drop

From the sand clock

Is it that I am repressed?
Or is it that this beating heart
Sees no boundaries around you?

When you leave, it's like you die.

And then I must find
Somewhere in time

A place where you do not exist

- PatInTheHat