Burnout

    The certainty that remains, I have no idea what I want.  I suppose it is actually that I have too many ideas, none of which dominate the others.  My moods and dreams shift and sway like a turbulent tide of the mind.  Things never settle in here.
    Some nights, I just want to burn away what remains of my youth.  In an explosion of passion and delirium, go out in the night.  Let a frenzy of lust, music and drugs overtake me, carry me to a high there is no coming back from.  Die amongst the faceless masses in blissful ignorance of any higher issue of life.  Perhaps the most peaceful life and end, in dark and primal way.  No struggle with right or wrong, with obligation or duty.  Just the pursuit of pleasure until there is no more.
    Then, instead, I want to be a scholar.  A man revered for thought and intellect.  Sitting in a study, pouring myself into the latest novel, a story that will outlive me.  Words that will move and influence far past the mortal shell.  I’ll be read by millions of soul, impact their lives, shape the future.  Bring this petty and disgusting race one step closer to enlightenment.  Push the limits of understanding, make us more than what we are today.
    Even the standard dream has appeal.  The wife and kids in the burbs.  The love and personal affection of a family.  Holiday dinners, sports games, dispensing fatherly advice and making love to the same woman each night.  To have a bride that doesn’t betray, a love that lasts.  To know the simple bliss of love and lineage.
    At the end of every day though, I’m too tired to dream.  My head hurts and all I really want is a sleep that never ends.  All roads lead to oblivion.

Decay

     I lay here, incapable of movement.  I am broken.  Everything about me is broken.  I’ve been spent, used up, run dry.  An empty soda can in the trash someone forgot could be recycled.

     I don’t know when it happened.  Hope had been surging in me, battling back the demons and my darkness.  There are not new issues; there are no insurmountable problems, other than the great one, life.  This sadistic obstacle course we’re all born into. 

     It’s gone though, the hope.  It flickers a tiny light every once in a while.  It coughs to let me know it’s still there somewhere, lost in the muck of my insides, not quite dead.  Just like me, not quite.

     Close enough though.  Every part of me feels shut down, ruined and wasted.  Physically, emotionally, sexually, spiritually.  I want to just lay here until the grass grows around me, let moss cover my face and disappear into the earth.  No sign he was ever here.

     It’s just a flair up, I tell myself.  A momentary reoccurrence of so many old pains.  An old injury getting used to the winter chill. 

     I feel so old this Christmas.

Reaction

    Labels and brands, something we do out of ease or convenience, can quickly become something else.  People far too often let these things define an individual, rather than just be what they are, a descriptor of one aspect of their life.  One word doesn’t make a person, but too often we allow it to in our minds.  
    No longer can a lack of understanding be an excuse.  No longer can disapproval of some small portion of a person condemn the whole.  The world is not so black and white, so two dimensional.  We are complex creatures of a complex realm.  We must seek to understand before we can even entertain the thought of us being able to judge.
    I drink alcohol, sometimes in large quantity.  I have had sex outside of marriage.  I am dear friends with many gay and lesbian people, and I celebrate them.  I’ve cut myself, just to feel the pain.  I’ve contemplated ending my own life.  I don’t have faith in a higher power, and sometimes feel a nihilist.
    These are facts about me.  Not one of these defines me as a person, they are each one small part of me.  Some people love some of these things, some hate them, but I’d like to think anyone reading this knows that regardless of your agreement with the above, I am more than that paragraph.  
    There is no malice in my message, only a plea.  I beg us, as a species, to find a way to look beyond these small lines and differences, and find what is lovable in all of us.  I truly feel that if you try to look into the heart of someone you consider wrong or undesirable, you will find a good in them that is not so different from your own.

Deprecation

     I feel like I woke up halfway down a mountain I’d thought I’d climbed. So tired, so lost, so unsure of what I want, who I want to be, where I want to find myself. I can see myself in so many different lives and roles, and I’m not sure which is even me. Maybe they all are, and that’s how messed up I really am.
      I quit smoking, during a period of time that will truly test that resolve. It has been a week or so now. I miss it. It is a little sad to say that cigarettes were one of the nicest consistencies in my life. A guaranteed escape, whenever I needed it, for about 4 minutes. I’ll probably always miss it.
      I find no peace in anything else. Pleasure can so easily turn to panic, socializing to cynicism. It makes me lethargic, lazy, a great human sloth. Sometimes I sit and hope that the novel will change everything, that it will be published, I will be able to write full time, and scour the globe for adventure and story. Yet part of me whispers that even if that happens, I will be alone, miserable, and hopeless as ever. That no matter where on this planet I find myself, in the darkest hours of the night, I will suffer and self abuse. I will cut and bleed and forever feel the festering, unhealable gashes upon my soul.
      I will never live up to my own expectations, I realize. I will always be this wretched, pathetic bag of flesh. I will never achieve or learn or love enough to make up for this consuming darkness. I have now and will forever fail. 

Goodbye Grandpa Jim

    Waiting with Grandpa.  He hasn’t spoken since I arrived.  Family has filled the room, and the mood rises and falls faster than the waves outside.  I barely recognize this man, surrounded by love.  His face is thin, his eyes empty, absent the expression and humor I knew.
    My brother is holding his hand, and has been diligently for hours.  Holding his other hand, I watch and listen to his breath.  Long pauses send fear into my chest.  It tightens, becomes hard to breathe.  Then he gasps again, and I too can breathe again.  We all know it is coming, but still I dread.
    Everyone else here is discussing heaven and faith.  About how they know where Grandpa is going, and how they’ll see him again one day.  This talk makes me feel all the more alone.  I’ve had my issues with faith, and in moments like this, I wish I could have it and the comfort it seems to bring.  But I don’t feel it.  Where everyone else feels God in the room, I just feel the grief, and the love that binds us.
    As the hours pass, everyone talks, catches up.  I wonder if it feels as hollow to them as it does to me.  I understand why we’re doing it, to not feel alone in this, to remind us we are still a family, still have love.  Yet I can’t help think that very soon, there will be less love in this world, and one fewer person who loves me.
    Grandpa taught me how to fish.  He had a boat on the Oregon Coast, in fact he ran a charter business for fishing and whale watching.  We’d go out, my dad, brother, Grandpa and I, and fish.  My dad and brother would always get sick, but I never did.  I’d inherited Grandpa’s sea legs, and I was always so proud to be the only one that did.  It was something that was just ours.  While everyone else was passed out sick, we’d still be fishing.
    It’s been a long time since then.  
    My dad gets up to run down to the store, but as he reaches the door Grandma calls for him to wait.  We all know.  Suddenly, he is surrounded by everyone.  There are words and prayers, and so many tears, and then he is gone.
    Grandma is wailing, my head is spinning, my body shaking.  We knew it was happening, yet still it shocks us.  A wife is hugging her husband’s lifeless form, a son is comforting his own sons, and I am useless.
    Not long after, I leave.  I have things to do, things I could probably cancel, but I want to be alone.  I feel selfish and horrible.  I hate myself a little more with each passing mile as I drive through the dark.

Fire Dancer

    Sometimes I feel like I’m alone on an island in the night.  I shake in the cold wind on the shores waiting for a glimmer of light on the horizon, a beacon of hope and an end to loneliness.  Sometimes I feel that way, but not now.
    Right now I feel as if I’m beside an enormous blaze.  This colossal flame of my own design licks my face.  Heat, light and smoke dance across my naked body, and I dance in reaction.  A fervor, as anything driven by such burn should be.
    I don’t know what is real in this light.  It is an unpredictable beast, and what it illuminates is just as impossible to foresee.  All the other figures around the fire are as much light as they are shadow.  I can’t see these other dancers clearly, but they are beautiful beyond words.  They move as frantic as I, they twist and shake like no one is watching, and in the red glow they seem to project as much heat as they take in.
    I don’t know if this will make sense to anyone, but it is the only way it can be said.

A Direction

    Figuring out what you want and need is no small task.  For me, my draws and desires seem to shift from moment to moment, and it becomes a haze of beauty and bitterness, desire and defeat.  But one thing in what I seek remains constant, and perhaps this means it is the only true portion of what I want.  Whenever I find her, wherever we meet, I want someone who inspires me.
    A muse for my craft, a motivator for life.  Someone who, just by being herself, makes me want to be the best version of myself I have ever been.  A hard to define quality, harder still to find.  Something I haven’t ever had in the purest form.  Yet only the taste I have experienced has left me knowing it is something I need in my life.
    Loneliness smothers though, you find yourself gasping for a breath of change from the solitude, and contemplating compromise.  Take the easier path, find comfort and calm, it often doesn’t sound so bad.  But such a choice is a slow death, I fear.  Little by little hope dies out until all you are is a routine intertwined with someone else’s.
    Of course, this could happen with a muse as well.  We are all human, we are all flawed.  We all get lazy and at some point succumb to sloth.  In these moments, I need to be able to look into her eyes, see the soul that so fired my own, and find the will to fight again.  If you never had the fire, there isn’t hope, and it isn’t a way I can live anymore.
    Everything else is shrouded in uncertainty, and I’m ok with that.  I may never have children, make a lot of money, or find fame and recognition.  None of these things will matter though, if I find the woman who can pierce my soul, and love me with the same fervor and passion that I will give to her.