Night turns into morning eventually

I have things running through my mind.
I can't sleep.
It is now nearly five in the morning and the sky is already light.
I have- not to put to fine a point on it- cooked, fretted, fussed, snapped, paced, drunk and smoked in order to try to dull the ache of... conscience? Hmmm. Maybe that's the word I am looking for. No, I think it's integrity. My integrity is aching - I have a dilemma, maybe more than one.

I am making no sense - but I'll try to write it out.

I am appetite and hunger: physical longing - specific and precise, buoyed by emotion and a newly won sense of myself. I am not just a mind trapped in a body, I am an integral whole. But I am still appetite and hunger - it is there, it is a part.

I am spirit and soul: heartfelt yearning - expansive and expressive, steadied by a corporeal reality and an image of myself. I am not just a body governed by the mind, I am complete. Even so, I am spirit and soul - and meaningless without the physical form.

I want to be impulsive and spontaneous - and yet I fight my impulses, I try to conform, to not offend, to be safe and tame. I want to be emotionally open, free and brave - but I keep coming across barriers of fear and convention that I am wary to cross, some physical, some spiritual and emotional.

I have stopped living a life in my head and now live it in my body. This is new for me. I look at the back of my hands for comfort. I have seen them countless times, I would recognise my hands were they photographed and their picture laid out before me amongst thousands - and yet I cannot describe them, I can't even picture them should I close my eyes. So many things I take for granted - I should look closer, I should remark more, question more, seek more.

But where is the line drawn? What barrier is it that halts me in my tracks, that gives me pause, that makes me reflective and scuttle back to my safe interior world? I need to test out boundaries, to not be afraid of travelling too far that I cannot come back.

-And there is the fear.

I can't simply not be afraid- fear is an emotion and I need to be open to emotion - but I can battle my fears. I can take them on. I can overcome fears - I already have faced so many. But what if by facing my fears I lose something of myself - the self that I have fought so hard to regain and keep? Can I be simply physical and lose nothing of my soul? Can I be merely spiritual and not neglect my physical wants? Should I even try?

I have friends who have faith that I can do and be whatever I want. That I can do and be hard things, things that threaten my body and my soul, and come out stronger, better, more. I'm not sure I share their faith.

This is the abstracted truth a sleepless night brings me: more questions that I can only answer by testing and trying. -More questions to which only I can find my answer...