Wonder if what I see myself

Sometimes I look back at myself, and I wonder if I was ever as good as I thought I was. I wonder if I was as innocent as I remember, or if it was all an illusion. I wonder if what I remember being is what other people saw me as. I wonder if what I see myself, as being is what people will remember me as.

Some days I feel so used up, wrung out, already burned up and broken. I don't feel like I can give anything more, and then I dig down and find something else, one more tattered bit of self that I haven't given up yet. I feel myself stumble along, not quite sure, and making it up as I go along. I don't know if I'm going to ever be able to do all the things that I see myself doing. I don't know if I'm going to be able to fulfill whatever greater purpose I might happen to have in life.

I'm so afraid of failing the people who matter most to me. I want so desperately to be everything to them, to give them everything, to have more strength inside so that they won't need to hurt. I want to give them my strength, I want to just be able to close my eyes and let it flood into them. I want to be able to just give them the peace and happiness that I feel sometimes.

Yet I'm sitting here, staring at the tattered rag of my self, the broken pieces of a puzzle that could have been beautiful. I am not so damaged as I sometimes think, and while the edges are frayed, and the colors a bit faded, the picture is still there. I still can see something worthwhile, something worth working to recover, and a state of being worth trying to return to.

Sing a song of six pence, and a pocket full of hope, dance to a tune that no one else hears, and hold me one more time, my dear.