My Pool

Yesterday I realized that my life is a mishmash of things I've dug up and slapped together with Scotch tape.  I live a flimsy lifestyle that I keep trying desperately to make more substantial.  Nothing grounds me.  Nothing pulls the pieces together.

I'm kneeling on a slippery rock next to a small tide pool with water so deep and dark I can't see beneath the surface.  Everything I have has come from this pool because I stuck my hand in and grabbed it. The things that could potentially nourish me, I keep, no matter how small or weird.  

I can't retain everything I catch.  Most creatures bite and sting and I have to let go.  Sometimes, even when I scoop it out of the water thinking it's finally mine, the creature wiggles out of my grasp and flops wildly until it plops into the next pool down.

The things I have kept are easy to keep.  They are small and benign.  They practically jumped into my hands.  I hope, desperately and in vain, that they will grow if I nourish them just enough.  But initially the smaller creatures don't nourish me, so they take a back seat in my mind as I search blindly for more, for better, for anything else that can supplement what I have.

My life at this point is frozen at the edge of this tide pool.  The deeper I search, the more trinkets I find but cannot have.  Most of them hide at the bottom after they realize I'm up there trying to catch them, not knowing I only want to make it into something even better.  Every time I stick my arm into the pool it becomes more painfully clear that I can't pull enough trinkets to glue into a cohesive life.  My conflict is, I don't want to abandon what I have already collected.  I want for them to grow into something wonderful.

But it's not enough. I need a bigger body of water to search through, or better tools to help me keep my grip on what I want.  I feel trapped on my rock.  Something needs to change.