Lacking

    So it came to be that I was not lost.  I knew exactly where I was, where I had always been.  Suffocating in the expected and mediocrity.  So dead set on not living the life that I wanted, but rather the life I was suppose to.
    This has been the destruction of my life.  This is my great tragedy.  My incredibly cowardice.  I envy the brave.  Even if that courage takes them away from me or what I want, I respect it.
    So many ideas, so many possibilities.  If I just had the guts to grab them.

Words You Left

    The worst thing ever said to me was “I’m not sure I ever loved you.” It isn’t because I feel like I’ve never been love. I am loved. I am surrounded by it, often enough that I feel guilty for how unhappy a person I am. No, why those were the worst words is something else.
    The love we had may not have been perfect. She may not have understood my love for her, or even unconditional love at all. Yet we shared a bond, a connection unlike any other. A closeness that won’t exist again, because it just doesn’t happen. Being that close isn’t healthy, but it is so very nice, when you’re in it, before it sours.
    To allude that this bond was in someway not genuine, that it was in fact fake, is an insult to me. I was in it, I remember. To think that for years it was just confusion, but the feelings now, surrounded by erratic and irrational behaviour are true is, was, absurd.
    I loved and was loved. It went wrong, perhaps it always was wrong. But it happened. Wounded, insulted, blind, alone I soldier on. Perhaps the wrong word. I am no soldier, I have no strength. People say they know I’ll be “okay”. Yet I know there are lessons we cannot unlearn, there are places we cannot go back to, and I don’t even remember what “okay” means anymore.

Rinse, Repeat

This is all a lie. The hope that is proves false. We cannot escape our wounds. Rejection from the barely known sparks pain beyond their potential. My hopes for myself die.

            I am a falsehood. We are, everyone of us, worthless. I still long to dream something special, something that makes me again feel worthwhile, unique, amazing as I once did.  Something that makes me feel chosen beyond hormone and availability.
            In this night I am a face among the masses. I am the nameless. I am the hurt we will all feel, the rejection that cannot be ignored. I am the blood that must be bled, because the only other option is death. I am despair.
            Alone I return home. Minor offenses burning with the sting of greater betrayal. I cannot escape the fact that even in the greatest happiness, I still know life is hollow, worthless, and insignificant. As is every part of us.

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.