Anger

“Despite all my rage
I am still just a rat in a cage…”
-Smashing Pumpkins

The heat kicked in shortly after. I was still ice cold on the outside but my lungs were set on fire. To cope, I tried to place blame wherever I could. I went straight to the top and lashed out at God. How could He allow this to happen to me? Was I not good enough? Did I not do enough good things? Was I going to be punished simply because I didn’t go to church enough or read enough chapters from the Bible? Even before I went to college, I had prayed nightly to be saved, prayed that I would find love and friendship and acceptance, not only from people, but from myself as well. And it never happened. Those night prayers went unheard or ignored. This wasn’t a case of the biggest miracles spinning from unanswered prayers. This was a case of outright neglect on His part. At least, that’s what I thought. What a slap in the face of someone who tried so hard to be a good person, tried so hard to do the right thing and always made other people happy. I might not have been the best Christian but I felt like I was still carrying out God’s will. I was still serving people, still loving them and wishing them the best despite their less than stellar behavior toward me. I was still trying to spread a message of hope and love to others. I gave up so much of myself to others only to have them take advantage of my willingness to please. For all of my life, I lived for other people and my reward was dying alone in a bed that wasn’t even mine. Where’s the justice in that? Where is the reimbursement at the end of a life? Where was God when I screamed His name at night? Where were those loving arms that I had heard about so much in church and in the words of believers? They were not holding me up.

What is the point of living a life to serve others only to be refused, abused and ignored by them and then left alone by your creator to die like an insect in the dark corner of a kitchen?

The anger pumped through me, literally turning my stomach. Nausea washed up and out of me and I could feel a rising tension in the area where my stagnant heart was. As the thoughts tore through my brain like rotating razor blades, I worked myself up into a frenzy. I wanted to scream until my vocal cords corroded from the stomach acid I was churning up. I wanted to rip something, someone apart. I had never been a violent person in my life but in my demise, I was all too willing to deal out some death of my own. Why not dole out the same detriment that was dumped on me all of my life? What did it matter anymore how I acted? I saw that I was already damned. What did I have to lose?  My life?  My salvation?  They were already gone.  An when those two most precious gifts are gone, you are free to follow the foul feelings that have been previously kept locked away.  It’s amazing the thoughts that will pass through your head when you feel you have been stripped from the rules and regulations of the world. You allow yourself to move into the corners of your mind that were once closed off, those tender areas where malicious thoughts marinate. The uncharted path is terrifying. Exhilarating.

There are times when I literally believe I am capable of killing. It’s not the kind of killing that is planned out, the revenge against someone who jilted me or the careful orchestration of evisceration against an ex-lover.  It's the kind of killing that comes from snapping, from being pushed toward my breaking point until I break someone's neck.  One day, someone will say or do something so infinitesimal that any other person would shrug it off as a mere annoyance but it will be just the push I need to negate any space for reasoning and that rage that has been building inside of me will boil over into me bashing someone's brain in.  No need for a gun or knife. Just my bare hands.  It feels more fitting, more animalistic and satiating to the primal perversion inside. Just me taking someone's head into my palms and slamming it on the ground with a wet crunch, like splitting open a watermelon.  Crack.  Splat.  Repeating until there's nothing more than a mound of wriggling pulp.  Just one more bad word directed toward me, one more dirty look, one more disheveled shirt and I will have no more control over what the anger does, taking over my body and taking it out on someone. And it sickens me because this wasn't me before, this wasn't what I was about before I was transformed into a pale pariah.  In life, I had wanted to help people, to save them. Now, there’s a part of me that feels no one is worth saving.

And I blame people for being undeserving of salvation.  It's mostly their own fault I have no hope, no tolerance for people anymore.  This is not a blanket statement.  There are some individuals out there who I believe deserve the best that life can offer.  I'm talking about the mean people, the rude liars and selfish thieves.  The world itself is so cruel on its own that there's no need for bad people to worm their way in and cause their own havoc.  There should be no more room made for such hate and evil and the people who actively incite disorder should be disposed of.  It's sad to know how the evil world and the evil people who live in it are in cahoots to cut down the good kids, to turn innocence into apathy, beliefs into broken dreams, hope into heavy laments.  And the worst part isn't how the deviants reach people and tear them apart.  The worst part is how the deviants break down the good people and build them up to be a part of the population that pollutes others.  Recruiting those who ridicule.  It's the real life zombie epidemic of emptying people out and converting what's left of them into mindless, heartless bodies that carry on the disease of darkness.  And maybe saddest of all is the fact that I'm one of them.

And I blame myself.  I'm angry that I wasn't stronger than the people who pulled me down.  I'm mad that I wasn't calmer in the face of frustrating circumstances.  I'm angry that I focused more on my anguish than my art.  I did everything wrong, everything backwards.  I took care of everyone else instead of myself.  I wanted God to serve me instead of me serving God.  I wanted to be a great artist yet stopped drawing.  I was depressed about being fat so I ate to quell the crushing weight of body awareness.  I am angry because I never found my own joy.  I don't think my life was very significant and I'm angry because I was never given the chance to be significant.  I mean, I had just finished school and should have began truly living but my life was cut short.  I was weak and let everything overwhelm me.  The constant heartache was too much for my body to take and it simply gave out.  Where was that strength that I should have had, the development of thick skin and confidence in myself to keep me pushing forward?  Where was the courage, the persistence, the knowledge?

I’m angry that I’m dead but I’m more angry that I never truly lived. I never felt romantic love and barely felt familial love from my parents. I never loved myself. I've only kissed one person. I never spooned with anyone. I wasn’t touched, hugged, caressed enough. I never explored the country or the body of a woman. I never lost all the weight and gained all the confidence it would take to be socially accepted.  I never did the things I dreamed of, the small wants and the big needs.  I was a victim of my small town's limitations and never utilized the opportunity I had when I finally escaped.  I was too busy breaking down.

I’m most angry about the fact that I never did anything about those dreams and desires. I just kept wallowing in my own waste hoping that one day things would change.  I never took the initiative, always hoping God or someone special would intervene.  No one ever did.  And now I'm in this in between deadness and I suppose nothing matters anymore.  I've never had an effect on anyone and as I move toward a more permanent death, I guess I never will.  The anger flows through my veins and comes out in hot waves but what does anyone care?  I am not new or unique.  No one will bother with me because they have their own problems.  I'm not the first unsatisfied customer.  I'm not the first failure at life.  I'm not the first dead guy.  So, my anger will never be heard, felt or acknowledged, only added to the giant sea of self-pity that I now drown in daily, taking my places in the water along with all the other broken and bitter bodies of undead past.

I am here but I am not.  I am trapped to the world like insects on fly paper, dead but still attached.  I'm withering away on the inside, a pain, a rage so concentrated that it bores a hole into my very existence.  I'm just another lifeless loser, a statistic.  When I was alive, everyone turned a blind eye to my bruises because they were mending their own wounds.  Now, in death, no one has time to mourn me because life builds up while death deteriorates down.  And I find myself down here, screaming for someone to save me, to hear me, to understand what I'm going through.  I'm not naive in the notion that I am all alone in my pain.  As I said, I am not unique.  I have not and will never experience a sensation that countless others haven't already endured.  But, I am alone in my own way.  While pain is universal, it strikes the nerves in everyone just a bit differently, just enough to let us know that our hurt is alienating.  And because variety is the spice of death as well as life, hitting us all in its own unique and twisted way, you actually don't understand my pain because you will not die in the way that I did.  Death is not the great equalizer.  Death is the great divider...

Denial

“How could this happen to me
I made my mistakes
I’ve got no where to run
The night goes on
As I’m fading away…”
-Simple Plan

My life wasn’t supposed to end up this way. And it wasn’t supposed to end at all. Not yet, at least. Not like this.

Death is kind of peculiar in how it will come for you. For some, it makes itself known gradually in the form of a disease or old age. For others, it’s as quick and unexpected as a stray bullet to the head or a car crash. Existence is like a bulb that dims over time or blows out in a flash and blankets everything in darkness. Sometimes, death can come from behind, give you the ol' reach around and startle you into awareness and other times it stares you right in the face and you never notice.  You catch the glance of oblivion yet remain oblivious.  We'll never know how many times we've danced with death, been twirled by its twisted hand, only to be spun out of its sights and allowed to bust a move on our own for another day, unaware that a silent choreographer just crawled on the carpet past us.

As for me, I was the oblivious one, the car crash bullet boy. That’s about all I know. I couldn’t tell you when or where it happened exactly, only that it was some time between the end of my first year of college and the middle of my third. My demise disguised itself as the normal aches and pains of existence, except these were the aches and pains of expiration. There was a constant pain in my chest that I simply mistook for broken dreams. My head felt foggy but I still had work to do, classes to go to, papers to write, books to read and lab work until four in the morning. All the while, I hurt. But, I ignored it because it wasn’t really anything new. But it wasn’t typical chest pains. It was something harsher, something beyond the normal wear and tear of being alive. But, I kept going because what other option did I have? Meanwhile, my eyes blurred and needed to wear my glasses more. I was tired all the time and started taking naps any chance I got. I started closing my blinds to shut out the light. I lay in bed as the hurt splintered off in all directions. I would perspire despite being cold.  The symptoms sunk into me and spread out of me, pooling pain in all directions.  This went on and on for days until the crescendo of crushing agony eventually slid into a dull ache. I felt something slowly flowing out of me, thick and viscous like honey but not substantial enough to grasp onto to keep it from slipping away.

And then there was emptiness.

I convinced myself it was some freak occurrence, some stress-related spasm. I knew better but I tried to reason with myself because there was still some semblance of rationale within me, a residual trait of humanity. I feigned fatigue in front of people. “You know how finals are,” I’d say as I let out a heavy sigh. Saturday movie nights still continued and I still participated. I sat around my roommates, these people I had went to class with and lived with, and realized I was not a part of them anymore, if I ever was in the first place. I laughed at their jokes and I smiled when they walked into the room but I didn’t feel any of it. It was all so surface. Maybe I really was just tired, I tried to reason with myself. I had been “on” for so long, pretending to be normal in and out of class, that maybe my body had shut itself off involuntarily. It’s hard to keep up appearances all day, every day. I gotta act normal, gotta try to be funny and likeable. But it wasn’t me just being tired. It was me realizing I was completely incapable of understanding these people, these humans that could sit and talk and create connections but I no longer understood what connections were. How do you like someone? How can you make them like you? How do you fake affection when you realize affection is foreign?

They walked to class with me. They helped me with my projects. They sat and watched television with me, ate with me, played video games with me. But they didn’t know me. I didn't know myself. I had lost what I once was. Or maybe it was stolen from me. Like a thief in the night.

A yearning that led to desperation that led to pain that led to atrophy.

I tried to bury it in the back of my brain but the truth was coming out, oozing from my skull like Play-Doh between a child's fingers. Everything around me screamed that I was not normal, that no one would understand me because I was too messed up, too incapable of making friends, of being human. I cried quite a bit back then, hiding my sobs in loud music and my tears in the cases of my pillows, praying to God and asking Him to make me okay, to restore me. He never answered.

I was alone in a way that I hadn’t felt in years. I had spent so much time trying to turn myself into something acceptable to society, shaping and carving myself into someone who appeared normal to the outside, donning a disguise so I could trick people into befriending me before my internal mess manifested itself as it always did. But, I was starting to feel that all that subterfuge wasn’t working anymore, that the disease inside of me was squirming its way out of me, splitting my skin and dislocating my jaw. It was as if I had climbed a mountain and before I could appreciate the apex, I was shoved over and I toppled to the bottom. Beaten down and broken, I looked up and realized I couldn’t climb that again. I wasn’t strong enough. I was quite literally incapable of standing up and even trying. My motivations were missing, my life was extinguished and it all felt pointless.

I graduated. I moved back home. I became a recluse. The emptiness only expanded into a void that could not be ignored nor corrected. And I told no one of the change that had twisted me into a monster, a heartless, soulless shell of something that had long since passed.  Who would believe me?  Who would understand me?  People that I once cared about so much no longer mattered to me. Art didn’t matter to me.  Writing didn't matter to me. Nothing mattered to me. I cut people out and began to rot in my own private hell.

And that’s when I couldn’t deny it anymore.  My condition was beyond sadness, beyond bitterness. 

In my eyes, I was dead.

The question of why plagued my mind. How could this happen to me?  I thought I had done everything right.  I was good and decent and didn't deserve this.  I left home to start living, not to meet my death. How could it be that the one thing I thought would save me actually wound up killing me. The irony only made the deep hole inside of me expand into an anger that consumed what was left of me, driving my body into another state of existence until I had been pushed outside of humanity and into a world made of glass.  Cold.  Sharp.  Transparent.  Just like me...

I Walked with a Zombie

i wandered this road

caked in the gravel

that chipped at my toes

and filleted my feet

blood left in the wake of my walk

sending up a scent for him to swallow

an attraction born from crimson

he came to me

and we walked together

his charm captured my trust

so I took his hand

in hopes for guidance

but he gripped my fingers

and crushed my carpals

his mouth pooled with blood

as my own flowed from my fingers

my eyes widened in horror

when i realized his were glazed over

i struggled to get away

clawing from his reach

and tearing at his face

i tore at his shirt

and as the flesh fell away

i saw the vacant hole in his chest

i turned and ran
barely escaping

as he leapt forward

in a feral frenzy

i fell into the arms of a beautiful girl

who took me in her grasp

and comforted me

my blood soaked her shirt

and she stared at me

with a gorgeous gaze

i finally felt safe in her eyes

as she kissed my lips

then tore them from my face

with her rotted teeth

a cascade of crimson

spewed from my severed skin

and i saw her eyes were vacant as well

i escaped her clutches

but couldn’t run far

for the dead were all around me

they closed in

and took the rest of my fingers

ripped off my clothing

and tore out my heart

i slipped into an undead slumber

and woke with an insatiable hunger

they took the best of me

my fingers

my lips

my humanity

now i’m nothing

but a walking corpse

no lips for passion

no soul for remorse

no heart for love

no hands for art

no head for reason

they tore it apart

now all i have

is the capacity to kill

i must, although i’m filled

with disgust

the desire to devour

is my only will

although i was dead

a thought dawned in my head

my evisceration born a revelation

aren’t we all just dead anyway?

the world will always catch up

and shut us down

like a virus through the blood

that makes us bitter

and filled with a red rage

don’t we all lash out

at everyone around us

don’t we all tear each other apart

for our own sustenance?

we shuffle toward our futures

but our futures are filled with blood

black and bitter

and we hurt each other

to make it feel better

but we're only making it worse

it’s a cycle that spreads

like a disease that funnels

through the veins

and we’ll all be affected

and infected

eventually

until we’re all torn

limb from limb

Residuary

In my last entry, I mentioned the fact that expression wasn’t allowed in my home and I want to elaborate on that. I think I’ve discussed it here before but I obviously need to reiterate it for my own peace of mind.

My mother felt like she was the only one who could show emotion. If I was a bit silly, she would call me out on it and say I was being childish. If I was sad, she’d coldly tell me to grow up. If I got angry with her, she’d get angry with me.  That just made me feel worse until I found myself apologizing to her instead of her apologizing to me, which is the way it should have been.  Eventually, I just learned to keep everything inside because to express myself meant facing ridicule from my mother.  And maybe that's why I'm so open now.  Maybe that's why I might over share in some situations.  Maybe it's my way of making up for all the times when I couldn't be silly, and even worse, when I couldn't be mad or sad.  I realized that you can't keep yourself bottled up in your body.  Yet, I'll admit that maybe I take that epiphany a little too far sometimes.

When I discovered writing, I discovered a way to let out all those emotions that had no where to go.  I was finally able to be silly or creative or mad without the fear of anyone putting me down for just being.  Over time, the writing transferred over to people.  It's not something I mean to do but one thing leads to another and suddenly I find myself laying out too much too soon and I have to start backing off.

And how about this for a leap:  this is also why I wanted my former roommate, Keith, to be such good friends with me (I know, when am I gonna stop talking about this guy??).  He was one of the first people I knew outside of my family and my small town bubble and I hoped that he'd be the one I could finally open up to.  I saw him as a potential mentor, someone older and wiser who would help me develop into a mature adult.  Of course, when I did open up to him, it blew up in my face.  He basically had the same reaction as my mother always did.  He was cold and uncaring.  Dead end with him.  I realized, despite my limited experience at life, I was actually the more mature one.  The disappointment with his attitude was all the more crushing when he not only didn't become my mentor, but became my menace.  So, then I went to that lame counselor who told me everything was all my fault so I had to stop going to him because he made me feel worse.  And then I had no one.

Sure, it's pretty sad that I don't really have anyone to talk to.  And sure, there are a lot of people who offer their ears but I doubt many of them truly mean it.  People always extend that offer but rarely ever follow up on it.  Plus, everyone else is so bogged down with their own problems that it would seem unlikely that they'd take on someone else's baggage.  My dad is made of brick and isn't easily approachable and my sister doesn't care about anyone but herself so I'm pretty much left to myself and my blog.

You could say my over sharing might be an inadvertent cry for help or a natural response to repressed emotions.  And I would probably agree with you.  Then again, I guess it goes back to whether or not sharing yourself with people is good or bad.  It depends on the person and how much you share and how soon.  Just because because I have a natural inclination toward sharing myself doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing.  I just happen to share with people.  I don't think that's the trouble.  I suppose the true trouble comes from choosing the wrong kind of people to share information with or maybe coming on too strong with certain tidbits.  And that's something I'll have to work on over time.  And that just comes from interacting with people and maturing as a social person. 

Ha, yeah, like that will happen.

Branomaly

I was watching the latest season of The Real World (I know...stay with me) when one of the girls said something I found interesting.  She and another girl were talking about their cast mate.  As they stood in front of the bathroom mirror and applied their makeup, they were discussing his reserved qualities, commenting on the fact that he never shared very much of himself.  One of the girls seemed concerned while the other girl expressed her admiration for his quietness.  To paraphrase, she said that people are all too willing to share too much of themselves these days.  Ask someone how they are and you're hearing about their struggle to come to terms with their alcoholic parent or the triumph of overcoming a speech impediment.  She said she actually liked it when people kept to themselves and didn't spill too much.  I found that interesting because that is the complete opposite of who I am in real life and in my writing.  And it begs a few questions:  am I sharing too much of myself with people?  Am I somehow diminishing the mystique of me by revealing more information than necessary?  And are people finding this annoying?

I think the reasons I try to be so open about so many things are because 1) when I was younger, expression wasn't allowed in my house and 2) I hope that openness can possibly create a connection with other people.  I think there are some thoughts, some feelings, some situations that people find themselves in.  These thoughts, feelings and situations might be embarrassing or maybe scary.  And when someone else can come up and talk about them, it makes you feel like you aren't the only one.  You don't feel so alienated and if you're really lucky, whoever talks about their similar circumstances might even work out a solution that you can also use.  Over the years, I've come to realize that expression is important.  You see all these programs and therapists that talk about expressing your feelings and airing things out.  The fact that communication is so open these days only reinforces that notion of expression.  We can just about talk to anyone in the world through cellular phones and Internet.  So, I feel there's been this giant push to be more communicative with others because the technology is there.  So, we might as well use it.

And maybe that's why the girl on The Real World didn't mind her cast mate's inclination toward privacy.  Perhaps she found it refreshing?  A nice change of pace from the emotional/verbal vomit that has been assaulting our senses for the past several years?  And it makes me wonder if I share too much, too fast.  This new(ish) job is actually a great opportunity to find out.  Reviewing my behavior over the course of the past week or so with my coworkers, there are times when I think I've over shared.  It's not so much that I automatically lay out my life story.  They just ask questions, which open the doors to answers, which open the doors to an explanation of answers, which most likely leads to over sharing.  I wonder if this annoys people or if they find it nice to see someone so open or maybe they don't care either way.

There's a part of me that thinks I should keep some things to myself.  Maybe I should be that guy who keeps to himself, the one who is reserved.  Not that I should shut everyone out but maybe I shouldn't be so quick to lay it all out there within the first conversation.  Besides, being quiet and mysterious is sexy, no?  There's something about wanting to know something more about a person.  Once you've found out what you wanted to know, the spark of mystery is pretty much put out.  It doesn't mean you lose interest completely.  I suppose it depends on your level of interest in the person in the first place.  I don't know.  Maybe if I hold some things back, leave some things up to the imagination, that might generate interest.  It kind of goes back to the whole "chase" thing.  People like the chase.  They chase fame and fortune and lovers and friends and material things.  Once they get it, it's not as gratifying as the desire for it.

And then you have to think of the dangers of the interwebs.  If you're too open, some of the info you've so graciously shared with the masses could end up in the hands of a teacher/boss/probation officer and that can get a little awkward.  It's one of those tricky areas.  It's information you're comfortable enough sharing with a large audience of strangers but not something you would necessarily want people close to you to know about.  Does that make sense?  You can talk about your abysmal bathroom habits or your interest in Scientology and it might make for good blog material but it would also make for interesting water cooler fodder in your office.  You wouldn't want people knowing what you're doing in the crapper during your lunch break.  I guess it's a bit weird to feel so comfortable sharing the most intimate parts of yourself with a group of unknowns rather than the people you actually interact with on a daily basis.  It makes sense, I suppose.  You're safe behind your computer screen.  You don't have to see the faces of the disapproving and those who don't like you can easily be blocked or ignored.  And those who are into what you're sending out will come to you.  It's a process of elimination.  It's a steady flow of traffic.  In real life, you pretty much have a set number of people who see you at any given time and if they find fault with your expressions, it could cause tension and future problems.

Then again, this is just who I am.  I've found something that eases the pressure of existence and so I will continue to use this medium as long as I feel it's beneficial to me and those who might have something to gain from my words.  I'm open.  I'm easy to talk to and I'll easily talk to you if I find you're a suitable fit for my fits of mad talk.  And over the years, I've pretty much talked about everything that was on my mind.  I can't think of too many times when I censored myself.  If I feel it's worth discussing, I will.  If it's not worth it, i won't.  But, I don't actively pick and choose what content goes into my writing.  It just happens to be whatever I'm stressing about at the moment of writing.  And with that being said, I'm not going to claim to be super open.  There are some things I haven't discussed (did that intrigue you?  are you curious to know what those things are??) and that's only because I haven't personally found comfort in throwing that kind of stuff out there.  As I said, it's all about what I'm comfortable with.  It's all about relieving stress and feeling better about certain issues.  And as I get to know myself better and discover who I am as a person and as a voice and as a soul, different things will come out and need to be discussed and/or vented.     

And what I find more interesting than someone keeping information to themselves is someone who reveals that information slowly over time.  It's like leaving a bread crumb trail to your brain, revealing a little more with each epiphany, peeling back the layers of behavior and personality.  For me, when I read someone over a period of time, I find them more interesting the more I learn.  Sure, mystery is sexy in its own way but I much prefer revelations.  Not only does it work for me for writing, but reading as well and I can only hope my readers feel the same way.  I mean, who doesn't want to be intriguing?  Who doesn't want to be an anomaly?  And how do you get there?  Do you take away?  Do you give a little bit?  Do you pull back in bunches of break off bits and pieces?  I suppose all I can do is keep myself as open and honest as possible and hope I'll find an audience who will find me a tad bit awesome.