Declining What the Territory Kept Offering

There are things I thought would wreck me until the moment I was identifying from inside the handling and there was no more time to be afraid,
There are things I had seen that would wreck me, I had rehearsed countless times in the anticipatory grief that resided in my chest for years before they actually happened.
There are things I thought would wreck me, because there was a version of me underneath the fear that knew something the fear had something to say,
If I had dared to confront what I believed would destroy me, I might have realized that I could carry my own vulnerability and that many of the limits I feared were ones I created myself,
There are things I thought would wreck me, I filed that fact quietly away without letting it revise a single line of the story I was still telling about how fragile I was...

I have underestimated myself as consistently and as stubbornly as I have overestimated myself and the two habits live in the same house and have never once been made to introduce themselves to each other,
I have underestimated myself in the places that matter most, the outcome was already beyond what someone like me could reasonably expect to hold or deserve to keep,
I have underestimated myself by treating every past success and failure as a lucky accident, never once though of the same logic to both in the same honest sitting,
Where in my life right now am I using the assumption of my own limitation as a reason to not start something, that I am probably more ready for than I am admitting,
I have underestimated myself for so long, when really it is just a more socially acceptable way of avoiding the terrifying work of finding out what I can actually do...

There is a kind of search I have been on, touching something underneath the noise that does not change when the circumstances change around it,
There is a kind of search I have been on, instead of letting it arrive in the form it is actually trying to take without my interference,
There is a kind of search I have been on, instead of performing the search in the direction that makes me look like the kind of person who searches well,
Is what I am reaching toward right now the thing I genuinely need to find, because the alternative would mean admitting I lost the thread somewhere earlier,
There is a kind of search I have been on, that I have not always been sure I was willing to find what I was looking for if finding it required me to change...

I often mistake the map for the territory, making assumptions about its meaning before it has a chance to reveal its true form beneath my hands,
I often mistake the map for the territory, that I walk right past the unexpected thing happening in the corner of the room that could have been the whole purpose,
I often mistake the map for the territory, that was not on the original blueprint including the ones I did not know I needed until they just appeared in front of me,
How many times have I been so certain about where I was going, that I failed to notice I had already arrived somewhere more interesting than the destination,
I frequently confuse the map with the territory, and the territory consistently presents me with opportunities that I never anticipated, it wasn’t until I realized that the true essence of my journey lies not in safeguarding the map, but in acquiring the skills and knowledge necessary to navigate and understand the land itself…

Watchwords:
I rose to it before the fear could catch me,
Underestimated where it mattered most and longest,
The search I keep interrupting with my own conditions,
Past the unexpected thing while chasing the plan,
The territory kept offering what I kept declining...