identity

"Most of the men and women in whom Momoulian had placed his trust had betrayed him. The pattern had repeated itself so often down the decades that he was sure he would one day become hardened to the pain such betrayals caused. But he never achieved such precious indifference. The cruelty of other people- their callous usage of him- never failed to wound him, and though he had extended his charitable hand to all manner of crippled psyches, such ingratitude was unforgivable."
- Clive Barker, The Damnation Game

When I put off writing, the pressure builds up inside me until I feel like my brain is going to explode.  The world is knotted up inside my head, pulsing to try to untangle itself but it only manages to strengthen the stranglehold on me.  It feels a lot like going on a diet.  When I can't eat, I get irritable, angry and confused.  After a period of deprivation, the cravings become too much for me to handle and I want to eat everything in sight.

It's the same way with writing.  I crave writing.  It's another form of nourishment for me.  Writing is another feel good food.  But when I can't write (or am too lazy), I start feeling deprived again and just like I want to eat everything I can get my hands on, I want to write about whatever pops into my head, from the mundane (which toothpaste is best?) to the profound (what, who, and where is God?).

And when I'm actually able to write, the world finds a way to uncoil itself, it's tendrils stretching out in all directions like inky black octopus arms, writhing to get my attention, yearning to be written about.  All the small stuff, all the large stuff gets trapped inside and I feel like I can't properly let it go unless I get it all out.

It's usually not too bad when I'm good about writing but lately, I haven't been doing well at all.  I'm exhausted from work and when I get home, I just want to watch a dumb horror movie, eat a pizza and then go to sleep.  When I'm at work, frustrated with customers and fellow associates, my mind buzzes with subject matter.  The words flow freely from a cut sliced open in my brain but by the time I reach the safety of my bedroom, the cut has sealed itself shut for another day.  The tendrils collect themselves into a tangled ball again and I can't get anything to come out properly.  But, I've noticed there have been a few limbs that have managed to remain free from the swirling mess inside my mind, recurring themes in my thought process that continue to hang down around my heart and squeeze: food, work, my aspirations and people, specifically the broken connections with people that are still scabbing over.

I can't seem to let go of all the people who let go of me.  Especially those who made me feel good.  I don't get many people who can do that for me so when they do come around, I get attached to them, probably too quickly.  They made me feel good, like I mattered.  And then they quite literally vanished.  Gone and away without a word of warning.  The worst part is it wouldn't even hurt that much if these people had not specifically told me they would be the ones to stick around.

I don't think anyone left me on purpose.  I don't think anyone meant to hurt me.  But they still did.  They hurt me more than they will ever know, especially because I'll never tell them.  The reason being is because, as I mentioned, they didn't mean to hurt me so why should I hurt them by telling them that they basically destroyed me?  I'm not sure that would benefit anyone.  It might benefit me in the short-term, to let all the anger out on them, to tell them how much they screwed me up.  It feels unfair to let these people go unaware of the pain they caused.

But it also feels vindictive, like I'm being spiteful to tell them such things.  I'd like to think I'd want to know if I hurt someone, especially if it was unintentional so I could first apologize and then correct my actions in the future but I'm not sure I'd be able to live with myself if I knew the depth to which I hurt someone like how I was hurt.  To know that I got right to the core of that person and cracked it would devastate me.  And no matter how broken I felt, I wouldn't want to do that to anyone else.  There are enough broken people in the world without me adding to the crowd.

The difference between the ones who left me and other people I've lost contact with is the people I just lost contact with never said they would keep in touch or stick around or never leave me.  People come and go and I can accept that.  With the regular people who slip in and out of my life, we all knew it was ending and there was a mutual interest in keeping in touch but no one made these grand claims or promises they couldn't keep.  And I wonder why the ones who did make these grand claims couldn't keep their promises, why they would even make them in the first place if they wouldn't put in the effort to keep them.

The worst part is it wasn't even just one person.  One person would be hard enough but I'd like to think I'd move on eventually.  No, this wasn't just one good friend who got up and walked away.  It wasn't even two people but a slew of individuals who abandoned me.  Individuals I truly thought cared about me.  And they left me, one after the other, taking turns crushing my heart.  By the end of it all, I found myself on the floor, trying to collect what was left, scooping up the sinew and and smearing blood on my cheeks, amazed by the rapid succession of stealing away and leaving me alone to atrophy.

And it isn't just a simple case of breaking a promise.  When these people left me, it made me feel inadequate, like I wasn't not good enough to keep up with, like my friendship wasn't valuable enough for them to want to hold onto.  It has really messed me up because these were not just acquaintances to me.  They were beyond friends.  They were special.  And I thought I was special to them.  Maybe at one time I was.  Something somewhere changed, however.  I don't know what I was to them before but now I know I'm nothing more than a ghost to them.

When I died, I always wondered what kind of dead I was.  I sifted through the different ghouls and goblins and tried to categorize my corpse.  I wasn't a poltergeist because I didn't haunt or harm others.  I wasn't a vampire because I didn't feed on other people for sustenance.  I wasn't a zombie because I wasn't quite mindless, or cool, enough.  Plus, I was a vegetarian at the time.  Nothing seemed to fit.  Finally, I realized I was just another restless spirit, an unsettled spectre with unfinished business bolted down to Earth.

And through it all, these people are the ones who still haunt me.  They are not completely gone, occasionally popping in to say hello but it feels more like a seance than a salutation, a greeting over the grave that means nothing to anyone.  They swoop in to say they are thinking of me without actually thinking of me, a shallow connection as a way to soothe their own souls and feel good that they at least made contact before blowing out the candles and slipping back into silence again, breaking the bond of the spirit board and sending me back to dissolve into death one more time.  But if they really cared, they would have done more than summoned my spirit.  They would have conversed with my corpse, no matter how buried I may have felt.

What's it feel like to be a ghost?  It's not great.  I float around, seeing people but never feeling them, hearing people but never being heard.  Transparent as glass and just as cold.  I want to shout and scream but my voice carries no weight.  I am nothing of substance.

It's the duality of the ruse of red cheeks and pumping blood that I show to the world while inside myself, I am dead, cold and incapable of feeling anything but insecurity and hopelessness.  The emptiness is as far reaching as the tentacles of my messy mental faculties.  It's the wanting vs being, the heartbeat vs blood loss, the sadist vs the soother.  It's a constant battle of expectations and realizations, what people think I am and succumbing to what I've become.  It's trying to maintain a semblance of normalcy, trying to fight off the hatred and fear that bubbles up inside me every day, trying to put on the face of the boy I used to be, pure and innocent and loving.  It's pushing down everything that everyone thought I was going to be, everything everyone thinks I am now. 

The appendages not only hold tight to my head but who I am as a whole.  Pull back the layers of limbs and you'll find a blank space where only emptiness resides.  There is no core because I am anything and everything.  Therefore, I am nothing.  I am potential and possibility and failure and freedom.  I am breathing and broken bones.  I am writer, artist, storyteller, maniac, restless, actor, mediator and yet I am really none of those things.  I have nothing to hold onto.  I have no identity.  I am not defined by my job or position within my family or passion.  I cannot follow through with anything or align myself with a movement, idea, or belief.  I do not move within this world.  This world moves within me.  I am pinned in place as it all rushes through me.  I can hear, smell, feel, and taste a sample of it all: the joy, the sorrow, the hope and disappointment but the only thing that's truly palatable is pain.

I suppose I wouldn't be so heartbroken over these people if I cared more about myself.  I wouldn't need them to make me feel special and wouldn't be so distraught over their disappearance.  But the truth of the matter is I needed them to feel good about myself and because of them, now I can't feel good about anyone else.  I am trapped inside myself with no solace, no one to turn to in times of need.  The ones I used to be able to count on are unavailable.  I want to reach out and touch them so bad, to grab them and absorb them into me, to recapture that good feeling but it's gone, pulled apart and burned away.  Never to be mended.

All I ever wanted was to show love, to love everyone and eventually find someone I could love in a special way and hope that they would want to love me in that same way.  And the very thing I wanted is the very thing that destroyed me.  It was that love that lynched my capacity to care for anyone else.  I see now it's not possible for me to love or be loved but that doesn't mean I don't crave it every once in a while.  It's that duality again.  It won't even let me give up on the ghost of a good thing.

The tendrils constrict.