Oh irony. Oh terrible incredible irony. Three and a half years prior I would look upon this day with agony and bemusement. If I had known then what I know now I would have done things slightly different. Things tonight turned out exactly as expected, with a strange twist. Sure the girl I was infatuated with three and a half years prior is in my bed, and sure it’s what I wanted, but the twist is that I’m not wanted in that same bed. I will be on the couch, while the love of my life three and a half years prior sleeps in my bed. The terrible irony is that not three years prior she felt the same way. But “that was a long long time ago, a long long time ago…” It’s a veritable Romeo and Juliet without all the drama and death.
Two were in love, one was betrothed. They instead became great friends. Two years after the fact, the other falls in love with another. A year later, both are once again single. Each finds out that the other was in love with the other three years ago. The boy still finds her attractive, they kiss on a new year, but it means nothing. She used to feel the same way, but “that was a long long time ago”. Now she passes out on his bed, he on his couch. Never shall the two entwine.
It’s easy to follow
It’s easy to fall low
Walking behind in bleak winter air
Surrounding and pounding us
Are those your steps?
Which are mine?
Which are his? That bastard
This was my trail, now it’s been sullied
We were only a month or two away from summer
I faltered, now we’re found.
Though I still follow closely, he gains ever nearer
Maybe it’s all madness, maybe these steps are all my own
Maybe I’m walking in circles, having lost yours long ago
I now glance to the sides every other step searching for impressions
Maybe if I find your lost path I can make it out of this alive
It’s all so uncertain, I wish I had a clue, will you lead me to safety?
I should have stayed by your side, you knew right all along.
Now I’m walking in circles, following my own path nowhere
The end of an era. I keep oscillating about a good equilibrium. I get too close and repel; too far away and I attract. I need a distraction. I want that cliche feeling of complete empathy with someone.
I keep having fleeting thoughts of terror at the way things are on a grand scale. We are just localized complexity in a sea of indifference. Both amazing and terrifying. And despite all this, people are still so cruel.
Distract me.
I used to love sitting in the bath, putting my ears below the waterline so all sound was muffled and strange sounding. It was comforting, a world all my own. I now find myself wishing I could recede into myself and just lay with my ears below the waterline, a world all my own. I’m treading too hard keeping my head up, the floor’s receded it seems. No longer a bath, a pond, a lake. Just to lay back and float would be excellent.
I won’t ever do that again. We used almost all the tissues, crayons scattered all across the floor, glowsticks dying in the corner. These aren’t exactly the tools for a massacre, but they did just fine. The aftermath was worse, how much longer can this go on? I’m losing it, I want to run. I want to fall off the edge of civilization. I want freedom.
I have so much I’d like to say, and I haven’t found the right tools to express it with. I see people with such great artistic talents and they make it look so easy, but they aren’t exactly saying much. Maybe I try too hard. This is probably my main struggle at the present. I’m too conscious of things and it’s only when I’ve let my guard down by some means or another that I can finally express myself and connect with people. I’m getting better, but I still care what others think..not all, only people I care about.
Recently I figured out why it bothers me so much when people express supernatural beliefs. It’s because reality and existence and life are so fucking absurd and beautiful that to say someone snapped their fingers and created it is just plain insulting. It’s like they didn’t even think about it, and yet they shrug it off as not important, something they know about. All the elements in the universe were created in stars, were fused out of protons which are composed of even smaller particles. These elements then massed together to form planets, and on at least one of them an ocean of molecules formed. These molecules were rolled and tossed and swirled about by the currents and patterns eventually emerged created complex arrangements of these compounds. These compounds became more and more complex until the basis of life was formed, and through the process of natural selection learned to take advantage of other life forms. This continued until a mass of matter was able to ponder this whole process, to gaze at the universe and try to understand it. We are all made of stars and everything we know is powered by stars and the laws of the universe. How could anyone shrug this away to some finger snapping? People seems so caught up in the trifles of their life that they don’t see the complexity and beauty of what’s around them and it just enrages me. What good is existence if not to investigate it?
Reveling in the beauty of a day to day triviality, often times I stop to ponder the profound. Not today, however, today I curse obscenities at nothing in particular, at many things that in fact couldn’t care less. Some of these are my responsibility, some are my misfortune, yet they seem to amount to more than usual. Maybe my mindset started off badly (the proverbial foot) and only when I returned home was the foot in the right place. Once the joy of having bested the demons of this daily existence wore off, however, I was left with a longing; again for nothing in particular. The one brief escape from the day occurred when I came across you, and it seemed to propel my mood upward while it lasted. The only thing detracting from this occurrence was uncertainty: me? I don’t know. You? Yes, very much. Us? We’ll see.
I have to stop letting other people’s emotions affect mineI have to stop letting other people’s emotions affect mineI have to stop letting other people’s emotions affect mineI have to stop letting other people’s emotions affect mineI have to stop letting other people’s emotions affect mineI have to stop letting other people’s emotions affect mineI have to stop letting other people’s emotions affect mineI have to stop letting other people’s emotions affect mineI have to stop letting other people’s emotions affect mineI have to stop letting other people’s emotions affect mineI have to stop letting other people’s emotions affect mineI have to stop letting other people’s emotions affect mineI have to stop letting other people’s emotions affect mineI have to stop letting other people’s emotions affect mineI have to stop letting other people’s emotions affect mine. OK.
I know this and yet IT NEVER SINKS IN. I want to just let go and do whatever the hell I want without worrying about others, but for some reason I can’t. I’d feel irresponsible if I didn’t take others into account, and yet it’s psychologically damaging. I was taught from a young age not to brag about anything ever, and it’s now progressed to the point where I don’t like to take credit for anything. This leads to me not having a reputation for anything and as a result I feel somehow less than everyone and this in turn starts the cycle all over again. I’m going to give a great effort from now on to say whatever’s on my mind regardless of what it may mean to others and not worry about making anyone happy. I was brought up to be kind and generous but it’s just not realistic, and I realize now that that’s not what people actually like.
A few nights in a row last week I woke up at around three in the morning, dragged myself to the bathroom and then was sideswiped by an epiphany. This epiphany was the same every time, and it was none less mind blowing and frightening. If I had to label it I would say it was a mystical experience. Whether it was the result of a still-dreamy mind state with its inhibitions weakened or whatever else it doesn’t make it any less true or real. It’s truly hard to describe and putting it in writing doesn’t do it justice. Trying to describe it to a friend was met with an empathetic glance, trying to give the impression of understand, but I know I couldn’t convey it in words.
This is the best I can describe it:
At that very moment, it became very apparent that I would die, not now but in the not too distant future. I don’t mean some premonition that I would die an early death, but rather the fact that since I was now living, I in fact had to die. The feeling was synonymous with the death of someone very close, once the knowledge that it was irreversible is finally accepted. In a way maybe it was exactly like that; after all, who are you closest to but your own ego? People know we die, everyone knows it, or at least they all say they do. The difference is that I actually felt it, I wanted to escape, to not be alive, because it meant that I would die. I felt like a death row inmate. I collapsed back on my bed and fell asleep and by the next morning I didn’t feel any of that experience lingering, but I still had the memory and it still seems very important. The next couple of times it became easier to accept, and now it’s a permanent component to my consciousness. I think letting go of things like this is important to living a more fulfilling life as cliché as that may seem.
So my point with all this? We shrug off all of life’s complexities and oddities and barricade ourselves in another reality. This is not the only reality, and for many this fact is particularly unnerving. To actually begin dismantling this barricade is frightening on many levels. Sure there are sciences and mathematics and things have logic to them, but all of these are within the context of the human reality. When you get down to the fundamental questions there are no answers as of yet. If you want proof just follow any branch of science backwards to its source. Why do we even exist at all? What is reality? Religion tries to answer these questions, which is a major point in my dismissal of it. Religion was invented by man to solve these fundamental questions, and as a result they are no closer to answering them. The answers cannot be put into words, and I’m not even sure if humans are capable of containing them. By expanding our minds we can get close to feeling the aspects of these answers, and that is mind-blowing enough as it is. So life is boring? No it isn’t, blow down a wall or two and you’ll see.
