I don’t know why I am the way I am. I don’t know what survival instinct to protect against the ache further pulls away my ability to feel. Outside of anger, frustration, and the satisfaction of overcoming obstacles, my emotional range is vastly stunted. I love, but I can’t share that love. I know, but can’t feel when others love me. The rapport… uhm… the ability to share and be in that emotional range: happy, joyous, light-hearted; it seems stuck in my throat. I know sadness. I know fear. I have a tremendous outpouring of grief at the most random of times and no defense when it comes over me.
I am comfortable with intimate strangers, uncomfortable with anonymous strangers, with family, with friends, with lovers. I am still, not empty, prone to not feeling good about things, intent on finding the cure to my fears, but can’t quite apply that to my ability to interact. I have become a ghost to those around me, feel dead to myself, and desperately question the point of this life; all that said, things seem to be looking up.
2.
While my skies took months to fill with long ominous clouds, it was no surprise to me, nor should it have been a surprise to anyone else that I would change my handle from Chicken Little to Intently Focused. I did work hard to try to stay the storm and take communion with my friends and family, enjoy the lighter things; I just seem to be too foreboding for that. All conversation with me ends in indirect stares, slow words, and a crooked finger. Somehow my apologetic Schindler has been replaced with the menacing admonishment of a dustbowl farmer, dead stare behind closed eyes; weeding rocks, harvesting dirt, waiting diligently for the rain.
3
In my head…
I don’t fuck with you anymore because this stress is too much for you and for you, escape is as fragile and as joyous as not dwelling on what you cannot control. I don’t fuck with you anymore cause this stress is too much for you and for you, escape is as fragile and as joyous as not dwelling on what you don’t understand. I don’t fuck with you anymore cause this stress is too much for you and for you, escape is as fragile and joyous as not dwelling on being too weak to change what is nothing more than a trick of the mind.
I don’t fuck with you anymore cause this stress is too much for me and for me, there is no escape, and my “alone” is a prison and I take no joy, but do often times numb the long darkness that hangs just inside of me. I don’t fuck with you anymore cause this stress is too much for me and there is no escape, and my “alone” has been sometimes replaced with meaningful relationships, but still no Footprints; still no time when I thought to ask “When I was alone, where were you…?” and you know what you didn’t say. I don’t fuck with you anymore cause I am a fucking killjoy and misery is a nicotine stained smoke stack that throws a fine soot on everything, reminding me that instead of reflecting on how I should have done more, I best just start doing more. I don’t fuck with you anymore cause I’m looking for God and he is not inside of you.
4.
Every time I’ve ever said “I gotta go. It’s not personal,” I have always come back to recrimination. Its challenging cause before I usually leave I do my best to try to explain my exit. I even try to fake the funk, but it doesn’t work; it’s passé to call that depression. I do my best to communicate “I am not doing well, I’ll be over here for awhile.” I am an only child. I am alone. It’s not personal. It’s not personal that my life feels in ruin and I just can’t feel the joy. Just seem to be struck with ache, all the time ache. Usually some very narrow focus seems to help that. The worse thing is that the narrow focus doesn’t preclude, exclude, or push me from still just wanting to feel even more off, just a bit more numb than I already do. That is a dreadful feeling. I’m not having fun. It’s just a cycle I go through. Seriously, no one wants that, no one wants me around when I’m like that.What folks want is for me to not feel like that, what folks feel is a rebuff to the bond we share, when it’s the bond that I carefully try to hide away, as if to limit you from just how horrible I feel about things. I am sad.
5
I want to be somewhere in the middle of a violent thrust; a surge! I want to be surrounded with people who feel the same way. I want folks to understand that I am sick of the “Journey, not the end result” fuckery they keep saying to me, and fuckery is what it feels like, cause I’ve made a good point of chronicling that I live for the journey and expect the journey to pay handsomely. Understand the fruit of my efforts are just that, the fruit of my efforts. That I speak so much about what I expect of the future does not mean I do not breath in the air, take in the moment, live for right now. That’s silly. You don’t go years with a commitment to things being a certain way cause you’re just living for tomorrow. Tomorrow came. I’m debt free. I’m trying to diversify. I’m trying so hard to find some balance.
The freedom is in my past. Do you get that? The freedom is in your past. I swim in vertigo from this twelve monkey nonsense. It makes me wonder why I ever come back to change what cannot be changed; those who live are not among us and we are the squabbling dead. It is no irony that I only feel free when I travel now.
I am a slave to the future and hold more kin with the jazz police than you might understand. The reward for hitting that goal is so short-lived. There is a new goal now and maybe if I hit them quicker, I’d be more satisfied. I am a slave to a life I chose and have done everything to distill it down to be beholden to just one person, to see if we want the same thing, to make it work to whatever end result, whether we’re together or not. So many people continue to pass the most peculiar judgement on me and the practicality in which I live my life, but in the end, I’ve tried -not always with success, but it’s always been my goal to leave people better than I found them. Sometimes I leave, but I don’t try to plunder. I don’t usually think only of myself.
6
I often times take payment at the end of the job. I am not usually one to ask for all or even part up-front. I sometimes work months or years for people before there is an exchange. I do not do well at living in the moment in a way that you might think of it. The only thing that seems to fill my “moments” is the peculiar distant association of taste as I shove shit in my mouth and try to analyze what compulsion it is that makes me treat food like a missing component to my spirit and not just like a fuel. I also seem to like a lot of near death experience, the sense of control, the all-in feeling. Those are two great examples of how I prison-thrill, but can’t explain stimulation as it effects me in the now; I dunno, it’s how I am. Past that thing which seems to be my compulsive and dangerous side, my Footsteps, my journey, my big picture is about making things happen and experiencing the final result, which often times is so delicate that I am usually consumed with the burden of how to maintain and care for the accomplishment, all the while leaving it to plan and execute another one.
I don’t feel like I’m going through the rough times alone. I see some other bedraggled, kelp-clothed, haunted figures, throat-slit gills gasping desperately for something that is not around to fill their insides.
I spent a lot of time directing my self loathing outward. I thought maybe this go-round I’d forgo the distraction and id conspiracy and this time direct it inward; either it or I will win. If I am to lose, then I say goodbye now. If I win, I must still bid you adieu. Who I was… Who I will be…. And who will be there to watch it is anyone’s guess.
Eh?
I didn’t ask for this serpent’s crown. I don’t think I ordered this perfect poisonous fit that grips my skull, but my head nonetheless is full of snakes, and my heart is choked by some invisible grip. The ground beneath me is moving in a sickly fashion. The lights are on, my eyes are closed to nothing, but I am blind still, to almost everything.