Oh, spirit of youthful ambition, truly disguised desperation, I pray for your mature return!
I remember those days well: I felt I existed at an incredible depth, and any long-term recognition (synonymous with survival itself!) depended upon completely climbing out of my then-present self. A fire surviving on its burning, my soul the flame, my life as it constituted itself, the log! Oh, internally combusting youth, how many days you possessed only to ritually incinerate them at some dubious altar, a sacrifice for tomorrow’s inevitable phoenix!
Self-regard, I don’t besmirch your budding steadiness. You’ve begun to accept that which was yours all along: yourself as a full member of sea-level humanity. But don’t let your past depth assessments fool you into thinking you’ve gained height that you haven’t!
Oh, renewed seeking, stamp out any feeling of false standing I have given myself! Fight off any tendency towards premature basking, too often endemic to our middle ages! Oh, basking, if you darken my door, come only at the end of a day when you’ve been honestly earned.
From time to time, I need this: to honestly believe again that it will take the extraordinary on my part to have any kind of hope of attaining an ordinary relationship with the world at large. New moments of creative desperation, where I cease to be but for what I can piece together! Let me dig for myself an underground workspace, a subterranean mental fix. Let me re-descend, mining the depths now in a more controlled fashion, reviving youth’s excessive sensitivity into something more sustainably escapable.