waiting for me is ink black

empty      
so so empty
I feel emptier than a void    
     
I used to be overflowing      
Full      
Full of shit    
     
I thought I had life figured out at the ripe age of thirteen      
     
I thought I was so smart and ambitious with all my dreams and unrealistic expectations  
soon to be crushed by the world's harsh realities    
     
I thought that I could have it all simply because I already had it all    
     
I imagined having a job. An important one      
Not the type where you’re playing hero, trying to save people's lives      
by cutting them open and rearranging their guts      
or saving innocent children from wild and unrelenting fires    
     
No, that’s not what I had in mind    
     
What I dreamed of was changing people's lives      
by putting thoughts and feelings into words      
     
Helping people discover something about themselves      
they already knew deep down, but just couldn’t express    
     
I wanted to bleed every enthralling story, and every possible experience in existence      
onto a page until there was nothing left of me    
     
When thinking of a far far away future I thought of wrinkled hands, scribbling, scratching onto a blank page until it looked ink black    
     
I had so much to give    
Sometimes I fool myself into thinking I still do      
But giving people something to—not remember me by, but instead      
remember themselves by—was the biggest dream I ever had      
     
And now that dream isn’t gone, but it’s suppressed by the need to make a living and not a dream      
     
I can dream at night when I sleep, I reassure myself      
I can dream of blank pages waiting to be filled      
Waiting for me…