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You gotta dance with the one who brung ya.

[texas axiom]

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I used to love inspirational posters. They used to make me feel tender, like someone was cupping their hand at the base of my neck or remembered my name at the grocery store.

Our relationship is harder now, because I've spent more time swimming through hours and days and years. And I'm not sure I like these posters anymore, because they make me feel like life should be easy, this clear-cut thing that smells good and translates well, and it isn't. I still don't see any evidence that it was designed to be that way.

You don't like your job? Change it! these posters shout gaily, but life is complex and dark, like the molecular makeup of blood or black holes. And maybe for these anonymous authors, things are somehow still that easy. But in my experience, it involves standing in front of someone and trying so hard not to lie, stepping over bodies, that feeling like you just bit into a pebble in your burrito.

These posters tell me that I should leave what I know and don't love, and that everything will be fine, but I've done pieces of this before, and it doesn't feel fine. It involves asking around for who you are and what you're worth, and those answers are always scary and misleading and maybe turn into an extra glass of wine at night. It involves despair and going somewhere new, somewhere exhilarating but terribly lonely, like a ruin on another continent you read about as a child.

These posters tell you to leave everything behind, to make a leap of faith, and I agree with them with almost every fiber of my being. I reserve very few fibers from that sentiment. But to frame something like that on a pastel background, to insinuate that this is the easiest, most natural thing there is, is like wartime paraphernalia or makeup ads. There is so much fear behind the faces that you're not supposed to see.

These posters say, Do what you love, but every step you take in this direction lays bare another warm, meaty layer of your being, something crossed with veins and pulsing with heat, something you thought no one was ever supposed to see, and this doesn't at first feel like freedom or faith. This feels like you are a father laying his only son on the altar, blind to the ram thrashing behind you. This feels like watching an empty tomb for that bone-cold hour before dawn.

I think these posters should stay up, in the bathrooms of non-denominational churches and the sidebars of idea-driven websites and the message boards of cheerful coffee shops. I think they're on to something. I guess I just want them to say, Hey, this is not easy. It is not easy to live. Sometimes I feel like the combined pressure of daily disappointment is going to liquify my body, press my collarbone to my shoulder blades, make me as two-dimensional as the laminated sheet in front of me, and there's not really a typeface for that.

I want reassurance that I'm not the only one scared to live, that I'm not the only one who feels like she has something to lose by being honest. I appreciate these posters, but I think the best way to hear this message is from people who have walked these truths out, because I'm finally nearing the point where I don't want anyone to feel like they need to clean this up for me.

I want to walk into it in the best and hardest possible way, bare feet on dust, pressing fingers against the crushing pressure in my windpipe to help me swallow it down. I don't think we were wired for anonymous cheering crowds, because if I got to choose, I would just want someone beside me, slightly limping too, my hand warming in theirs. Just outside my line of vision, but so close I can feel the flickering pulse in their fingers, their ragged breath rising and falling with mine.