“The pen is mightier than the sword.”

No. The sword and the pen have their own uses. They have their own strengths as well. You cannot have a sword fight with a pen (unless it’s riptide from the Percy Jackson series) and you cannot write a novel with a sword.

While I am at it, brains does not beat brawn. True, someone who is clever could easily outsmart someone strong. But just because someone has a lot of brawns doesn’t mean they aren’t smart. Then what happens when you try to outsmart your brawny opponent and get tricked and flattened like a pancake? You’re doomed. Brains and brawns have their strengths. If you have brains, you could think quick and may do well academically. If you have brawns, you can defend yourself and others easily. In a fight, brains will not always beat brawns and brawns won’t always beat brains.

So why do we compare these and say one is stronger than the other when clearly, it depends on the situation?

Too many things I fear,

But the worst must be failure,

Driving me mad, knowing that the smallest thing wrong

Will ruin the project - miss one comma and the whole meaning changes.

The slightest mistake and it will be no longer perfect,

And it must be perfect,

Or it is nothing at all.

Perfection, they say, is the enemy of good.

But I can't stop, no matter how I've tried,

Something's wrong, uneven, slightly amiss

And I panic and overcompensate,

I repeat and repeat until it's perfect.

To my demise.

So failure is the worst, the raging need for perfection,

The habit I just can't seem to break.

Everything must be perfect,

Or it is nothing at all.

The end of life as I have known it.

In recent years, my life has become one where people no longer return my ever-present smile with a smile, but rather respond with a barely disguised look of disgust; where a seemingly growing number of people feel it is acceptable to express - and act upon - racial, ethnic, and religious – even political party - hatred freely, giving no thought to the rights of their fellow citizens to live peacefully.

I have a growing fear that I will have to leave the home I love to live elsewhere, if such a place exists, where I will not have to worry about my husband’s safety, simply because he was not born American but rather proudly chose to become a citizen; or my own, simply because of the color of my skin.

I fear that the term “law and order” is being twisted to mean something very alien to having principles, following rules, acting in a civil manner, protecting our country’s citizens…each and every one of them, regardless of ethnicity, race or religion. Indeed, the catchphrase, as it is invoked by some, seems to have turned into its opposite. For some, “law and order” has become the encouragement of violence and anarchy. It is an example of what Orwell called, “newspeak” in his prescient novel, 1984.

I fear that the words spoken by Abraham Lincoln some 150 years ago are becoming a sad truth:

"Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide."

The danger has sprung, but it hails not from Russia, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, or China. No, it is domestic. National. American.

surrounded by

oblivion

sharp, twisting knives

the never-ending darkness

the abyss that's hidden inside my mind

spiders crawling across my lips

glowing eyes at night

needles piercing my pale skin

the hidden danger of heights

the grey of the unknown

looking into your bright eyes

driving down a busy road

telling myself that i'll be fine

while all my fears abound

jumping at the slightest sound

i turn around

no one's here

to save me

oblivion

surrounds

See you in another timeline, by then I would have cleanse my sins and maybe you would forgive me...

08.07.20

~Characidal_kid/Evie

I admit I was somewhat bored, and ill at ease. I scanned through the personals the way a person glances at the vegetable aisle. There, among the late bloomers and the bookworms, was this: What are you most afraid of? by some random guy.

It was daring, brash, and inevitably caught the eye. I coughed to cover my interest in the event that anyone should be passing by. Here was an invitation to a dark part of the night one doesn’t particularly care to explore alone, and equally, hates to share with others. It stood out as an offer, an allusion, of mutual understanding: Someone was willing to lend an ear!

There in the confessional of anonymity one could profess anything, and back away, languidly, into introspection. Had I been honest? thoroughly candid? did I dig deep enough to poke the ego, or was it to become just another superficial scar?

I imagined answering, and it was like cheating, on myself. These things that I keep closeted, even from me, my self, which lives in my skin, in an apartment all by itself, with a solitary key. I say “itself,” as me, so that you can all better identify with my perdicatment. Sex is of course intrinsic, but what of it? In situations like this we are all eunuches, male or female alike, equally tangled up in the plight.

So what was I so afraid of ...? I could see something forming in the back of my mind glowing with red eyes, and taunting me. It had to be brought up, and when it was it would likely be with blood. I was suddenly once again acutely aware of our mortality and the sense of drowning. I was on the brink of reaching for my phone, like a raft, to rationalize the thing out, when instead I found myself in my own handkerchief gagged. I shortly after passed out, and when I awoke the tv was advertising insurance, urging one to get a quote because the-only-thing-one-has-to-fear is fear itself, as the sheets were being stripped off the bed.

That is all I’ve remembered, in my effort to make a clean breast of it in private, on the reverse of this drycleaner’s receipt. I returned home shortly thereafter, on my own recognizance, and resumed, as might be suspected, an ordinary life.

07.07.2020

What are you most afraid of ? challenge @SomeRandomGuy