I was just struck by a realization.

Clobbered actually.

By something that I already knew, at least on some level. Something that I knew in my head, but something that perhaps I didn't quite feel in my heart.

I live, it seems, for the confusion and the complications. They allow me to obsess over the what ifs and the how comes and the why nots and all those other questions that intrude into my life like cats' paws under a closed door.

I sit here in this chair, and I make excuses. I tell myself that things are complicated. I tell the world that I'm being selfless. That it's not fear holding me at bay, it's altruism.

I surround myself in fog and mystery, because I do not want to see. The darkness comforts me, because I know what the light could reveal. I fear the light.

I live this shell of a life chasing answers that can never be caught. Because I never really ask the damn questions. Instead, instead I theorize and I hypothesize. I conjecture and I postulate and I assume and I interpret.

But I never just ask.

I could ask.

I could just fucking ask.