the devil and god are raging inside me

"And over the sea in a warm sunny place 
men and women sit watching TV 
they say, 'it's a shame anyone has to die
but it was either them or me' 
all safe and snug, tucked away in our mansions 
we smile feeling comfortably safe 
and over the sea there's a dark cold place 
out of sight, out of mind, out of reach, washed away..."
-Showbread, Escape from Planet Cancer

"The death, the rape, the tragedy

the world is an ugly place

what's capable inside of me

is going to rear its ugly face..."

-DIES, Aesthetics of Violence 

"And in my best behavior 
I am really just like him 
look beneath the floorboards
for the secrets I have hid..."
-Sufjan Stevens, John Wayne Gacy, Jr.

Several years ago at my former job, I sat down at my makeshift desk, which was really just a folding table propped up against a wall.  I was a temp, hired on to help the company catch up on their paperwork and they had no proper office to give me.  So they made due and assembled a desk from extra parts they had in storage.

As I sorted through the stack of files, I noticed the room grow dim on my right side.  I looked up and saw the florescent light on the ceiling had gone out.  I looked at the wall three feet in from my face and saw the light and the dark encompassing the same portion of polystyrene.  To me, it felt like the technological equivalent of the angel and devil on my shoulder.

When I was a child, as I came to understand myself and the world and people around me, I realized I wanted to help people.  I lived in a small town with small minds.  Religion reigned over everything.  God was not at the center of people's hearts but at the center of social normalcy.  And with that warped sense of religion came a warped sense of right and wrong.  They did not look to the Bible but to their biased pastor to see who should be shunned or celebrated and a mess was made of everyone.

Fortunately, I was able to avoid such brainwashing.  I did not grow up in the church and it spared me from being taught to discriminate (disclaimer: not all churches teach hate, just all the ones I attended).  I wasn't told to hate the gays or keep my distance from the blacks and shun the atheists and fornicators and underage drinkers.  In fact, all these "bad" people comprised the majority of my friends.  I liked them and I was a good judge of character.  How could they be bad?  And how were they any worse, open with their vices, than those who hid their sins on Sunday and resumed their wicked ways the rest of the week?

Although this "Christian" behavior was hypocritical, it didn't anger me at the time.  It only inspired me.

I realized I wanted to help people. I wanted people to love each other, to realize we are all the same underneath our skin and sexuality. I wanted people to know we all have the same desires and defects. I wanted to use my art to inspire and incite revolution. All I really wanted to do was open people's eyes.  I just didn't think I was good enough at the time. I wasn't quite ready yet.

I was a child, still developing my skills and message. What did I want to say? How was I going to change the world? I had lofty ambitions and I didn't want my life to go to waste. I grew up deformed in several ways and I felt so much pain inside because of my feelings and fears. I didn't want anyone else to go through that. I didn't want anyone to feel as alone as I did. Despite my personal demons, I thought people were basically good. The world was bad and we would get corrupted but we could be saved. We were worth saving.

two corpses, caressing

for p.

two bodies traverse the expanse of a bleak surface

turgid tendons, split shins, flayed toes

but still walking

propelled by a hunger surpassing the stomach

as lidless eyes dance among the faces

desperate to find a hollowed out counterpart

two bodies come together with clanging cartilage and vacant stares

empty eyes and lolling tongues

tissue skin sheared from the friction of fingers

gnashing teeth reminiscent of romance

hollow hearts and hands, touching and tearing

clamoring for a clavicle

but only grasping guts

devoid of pleasure but programmed by dim memories

of what this once felt like

two bodies moaning in the murk

assuaging and assaulting, seething and writhing

 falling away from each other in the blood wet world

trying to taste the truth of one body to another

but only tasting tin

drunk on the red wine of blood

full on necrotized flesh

satiated by nothing

one body gasps and screams

and shudders and stumbles
stops

then moves past the other

blood on the mouth, hole in the chest

seeking sanctuary in another skin

one body stands alone

and watches the other shuffle away

filled with a mud soaked memory of pain unidentified
flooding back from the faint fog

no marks on the skin, no bruise to the brain

only an internal hemorrhage

one person bludgeoned by the burden of belonging
recalls the ramifications of respiration
and dies again

 then concedes to the cold dark

and crumbles

cotard's syndrome

I was talking to my supervisor at work the other day and out of nowhere, she said, "Brannon, from some of our conversations we've had, it seems to me like you're dying a very slow death."

"Been there, done that," I said.  "Now I'm just rotting."

apprehensive

"They’re fooling themselves. They think all this bullshit about hard work and achieving means something but it doesn’t. Universe is completely random. Particles colliding at random. Blind chance. So you didn’t make it. No big deal. It’s not your fault. Shit’s random."
-Party Down

I'm not an atheist, just apprehensive.

I've mentioned before that I've stopped praying or relying on God in any kind of way.  I used to feel guilty about it but now I don't feel bad at all.  Nothing in my life has changed.  I'm no better or worse for it, which makes me wonder if God was ever in my life at all, or if God is anything at all.

I don't know.  I'm not sure I care.  I do hate that I've slid so far down but what can I do?  I've tried it all with the prayer and meditation and Bible reading and patience.  Nothing helped.  Nothing ever does.

Faith is a lot like a slot machine.  You pray and pull the lever and you hope for good results but you never know if you'll hit it big or end up empty.  It's really all random chance. You can never be sure if the constant prayer ever pays off or if things in your life just finally line up.  You want something long enough and if you work for it, you might just get it.  It doesn't mean God had anything to do with it.  Just to be fair, it also doesn't mean he didn't.  You just can't know so why get caught up in it?

It pisses me off when people think I have given up on my faith in God just because I am not where I want to be in life.  Do people think that's how I think it works?  I'm not new to this game.  I'm not asking for a perfect life.  It's not about circumstances but sensations.  I have never felt that comforting presence.  I have never had a good feeling when it comes to God.  I've only ever felt separation, emptiness, nothingness.  I am not reassured when I pray.  When I scream for God to give me a sign, I get nothing.  I am not comforted and therefore I don't think there's anything out there to comfort me.  How hard is it just to say hello?  If God cares/exists, why has he not shown me?

And where's the stable relationship with anyone in my life, cosmic or concrete, with flesh or faith?  My parents are distant, my coworkers are crass and former friends are too busy.  I can congregate and communicate but I'm no one's number one.  

I wish I could believe again.  I wish I could be the good little Christian boy in my Christian bubble like so many people around here.  They are small-minded and naive and annoying.  And sometimes I think it would be easier if I could just be that way, too.  What if God gave a shit?  What if he finally had mercy on my menial life?

It's not like he's bullying me or anything.  It just feels like it.  But that's conceited on my part because, really, who am I?  He has a whole big world to ignore so why would he single me out to slice and dice?  No, he's saving that dirty work for the devil.

in spite of the frost

"You're not alone, you'll never be
just like the stars lay over sea..."
-Jem, You Will Make It

"This could be a movie, this could be our final act,
we don't need these happy endings..."
-Funeral for a Friend, Drive

Hands 10 and 2.

He watched the broken yellow lines slide beneath his car, one after the other, hypnotic in repetition. Gliding through liquid time and space. The drive, the road, the interior reaching different levels of quiet calm. The kiss of wind. The lulling hum of the engine. The soft squeak of leather from shifting matter and a thumping chest. He turned up the music and exhaled as the tempo traced 'round his ears. Steam from the coffee in his cup holder rose and twirled in the air.

He felt the warmth in spite of the broken heater and the frost outside. It wrapped around him. Around them.

He reached across the caffeine and crumbs and slid his hand in hers. He kept his eyes on the road, his concentration on the yellow lines, his skin on the other, foreign skin.  Cashmere atop tendons.  Cool and fragile.  A burst of nerve cell signals.

He had written this scene so obsessively, dreamed this dream for so long, a dream miles away from reality.  Was it possible that when she came to him, materialized in bones and blue eyes, he had willed her into being?  Had he etched her into the interior of his retinas, cones and rods vibrating, crafting her shape and angles? Or had the divine hand peeled back its palm and formed her with featherlight lips and sent her to him?

Did such mercy exist?

As far as his memory could reach, he had traveled with a knife in his neck. It was a pain he knew better than himself. An old companion. A disease he wore like a winter coat. And then she came and withdrew the blade with breathtaking ease. Without the obstruction, he was able to look up away from the dirt and into the sky.  Eyes opened with a mobile spine.  This was how humans lived, how they felt.  This was the way it always could have been.

He was a pauper turned to a prince. A bug into a boy.  He wasn't used to such delectable treatment from anyone. It was scary and unnerving and unrelenting. It was decadence and sugar and flooding. It was a revelation, a religious awakening.  God existed in the space between pressed lips and pounding hearts.

Despite his resolve, he smiled, sank into the seats and into the moment, fleeting pleasures of pavement and porcelain.  The sun was spinning back around to find him but for those moments, the world was asleep and they could sneak away to enjoy the shadow sky, just the two of them, reveling in the moonshine and kissing under the holes poked through the charcoal veil of heaven.

He said if only they could escape the sun, driving off the path and into their own world, from gravel to grass to galaxy, they'd be free of it all.  She whispered something but the music drowned out her words, consonants cut up and lost in the percussion. 

He felt her touch withdraw. He looked down and noticed the cold coffee.  He looked to his right but only saw a blur of green from the passenger's window as the trees rushed past him, felt the jolt of a popped valve, smelled the black streak parallel to the yellow lines. 

He found his answer. 

He watched, suspended, his neck tensed, as the trees lifted off the ground and tumbled in the sky.

gunshot residue

Yesterday, a police officer came in to work and bought a blazer. I saw his holstered gun and it actually made me nervous. It was odd. I'm a violent guy. I love the stuff. But only in movies. In real life, I get squirmy.

If I was so nervous seeing a holstered gun, I wondered how freaked out I'd be if it was pointing straight at my head. It's kind of amazing how your perspective on life changes the instant you're staring into a tiny hole that harbors hell. I'm sure I'd cry hysterically and probably beg for my life. I guess that means I don't really want to die. It's weird, though, because I'm not too jazzed about living, either.

Despite my negativity, bad mood and PLAYING THE VICTIM all the time, there's still this microscopic seed of hope waiting to swell and burst, a needling feeling that something good might actually happen to me. Maybe things might actually work out.

Maybe I'll get published or fall in love or, at the very least, find a job I don't hate.

And I don't want to exit before that mysterious magical moment happens because I don't want life to leave a bitter taste in my mouth after I'm done with it. I'll need something good to hold onto while I'm being raked over the hot coals.

I just need to know there's more to life than bad luck, bad body image, and bad breath. I don't think there is but no one can really know now, can they? So, with that inkling of a chance, I stay here and work on myself and my writing and hope I'll work up to, or stumble upon, something significant. I just need to feel better about all the time I wasted.

There's some positivity for ya.

Cheers.

holding severed hands

"You wish that you won't wake up but you can't even get to sleep
six feet under for these six months, just dying to be buried..."
-Sacha Sacket, Sweet Suicide

"I'm waiting for blood to flow to my fingers
I'll be all right when my hands get warm..."
-Dashboard Confessional, The Best Deceptions

I've come across peculiar customers throughout my years in retail.  One gentleman used to come in through the rear entrance of the store and always went through my area to get to the jewelry department.  He was a tall man in his late 40s with a big, round belly.  He always wore polo shirts, shorts, and white crew socks that stuck out from tennis shoes, no matter the weather.  His shaggy hair was brown and unkempt, swept across his brown eyes and over his ears.  He had bristly hair that hung down from the nostrils of his Roman nose. 

He liked to pass the time talking to the jewelry associates, sometimes spending a whole hour looking at jewelry and chatting.  Sometimes he branched away from jewelry and talked to other associates in other departments.  Eventually, he made his way to my department to talk to me.  He spoke with a deep, booming voice and also with a lisp.  As he talked, his tongue darted between his small, brown teeth, muffling his "s" sounds.  Right away, I could tell he had a mental handicap.  He often spoke in circles, repeating himself as he stood with his hand propped on his jutted hip.  He talked about the weather a lot, hoping for rain or wind to break the southern heat.

I noticed he wore women's jewelry.  His hands waved in the air as he talked and I noticed several rings on his fingers.  The bands were thin gold that supported small diamonds.  He also wore a delicately thin necklace with a heart pendent nestled in the hair that crawled up over his open shirt collar.

I inquired about his taste in jewelry to one of my coworkers one day and she said the rings and necklace belonged to his dead mother.  He wore them to feel closer to her.  I didn't know if I thought that was touching or creepy.  Maybe a bit of both.

He also bought a lot of women's panties and his name was Roger.

But out of all his eccentricities, his incessant talking was the most problematic.  He talked about things I was not interested in, therefore it was painful to stand through one of his rants or daydreams.  He also often showed up when I was busiest and, not wanting to be rude, I stopped what I was doing to listen to him talk about hoping to win the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes and what he would do with his windfall.  I mostly nodded and even chuckled when appropriate.  Sometimes I folded a stack of shirts and then picked them up and slowly walked away from him to give him the hint that I needed to get back to work but he never picked up on any of my cues.

He made me uncomfortable in a way I couldn't articulate.  He wasn't rude or intimidating.  He was just awkward and I'm awkward as well so we didn't make a great pair.  I found myself hoping a customer would need help or the phone would ring so I could shimmy my way out of his conversational grip.  It came to a point that when I saw him stomping my way, I sprinted in the opposite direction so as to avoid his laser gaze.

I've known him for years.  He was one of many customers that I'd see and feel that sense of familiarity coupled with a bit of unease, but nothing I couldn't handle.  In his own way, he was a part of my routine, a consistent face, an expected presence during my time at work. 

While I was on vacation, he shot and killed himself.

One of the scariest moments of my life was when I had to talk a good friend out of committing suicide.  We were only children back then, in the middle of our teens and awkward with acne and agony.  I wasn't writing down my life back then so the events are foggy at best but I remember I caught wind that she was thinking about taking her life and so I called her on the phone at two in the morning and tried to calm her down.  She sobbed and I stuttered to find the words to talk her out of it.  I threatened to drive to her house in my threadbare pajamas if I had to just to get her to not hurt herself.

I remember the panic in my stomach and this heavy feeling of hopelessness that wrapped around me like a lead blanket.  I suppose she was feeling the same hopelessness, just filtered differently than mine.  I asked her to consider how killing herself would make her parents feel, would make me feel.  Through sloppy sobs, she told me she didn't care how it would make us feel.

I was hurt and offended but I pushed through my feelings to try to save her life.  Eventually, through an hour of calm coercion, she settled down and decided not to do it.

I didn't realize until several years later what it meant to not care about the ramifications of suicide.  I went through life with darkening eyes.  I felt the pain intensify every day, the hurt bubble up and bloom out over everything until it was all I could see.  All the laughter in my life didn't make a difference and was rendered ineffective, like putting sugar on a suture.  I realized I wanted out.  I realized how selfish it might be.  I realized I didn't care.  I saw how my friend's unconcern for my feelings was not personal.  I didn't want to hurt anyone but I was hurting more than anyone realized, more than I could express.  I was living in a skin that sizzled and the only way to stop it was to slide out of it.  Sometimes, pain is stronger than love or fear and you find yourself willing to do anything to end it, no matter who it might hurt.  It's not something you want to do but something you feel you have to do.

I think my friend didn't kill herself because she wasn't really ready.  I don't think I had much to do with it.  I was an ear and an assuring voice.  She just made a rash decision, a moment goaded by a bad day or dialogue.  I think if she was really ready, I wouldn't have been able to change her mind.  We always hope we have some kind of influence, that our love or language will steer the outcome toward life.  But I don't think that's so.  When someone is ready to go, there's no stopping them.  It may seem like a personal blow to you but it's not.  You can be there and try to create a connection.  You can reach out and hold their hand to comfort them but then you realize their hand is severed from their body and you're only holding onto a few fingers and a fledgling hope that somehow you'd be enough to make a difference.

You're not.

I kept thinking about Roger.  I didn't feel bad about him.  I wasn't upset over his death.  I wasn't going to miss him but he stayed on my mind and I wasn't sure why.  I guess I knew him enough to think it was a shame he passed away but it was also mixed with a perverted kind of reverence.  Some people think suicide is taking the coward's way out but I think it's kind of brave to belly flop into the unknown like that.  He was the first person I actually knew who had committed suicide.  This guy I saw around my store for years wasn't going to walk in with his tennis shoes and shiny gold rings on his thick knuckles anymore.  Why did he do it?  How had he summoned the sadness or courage to pull it off?  What was going through his mind?  Did he have anyone to talk to?  Did his impairment have anything to do with his death?

The possibility of ending my life is always there, always peeking its head out from under the shame and rage that fills my body.  It calls to me, reminds me it's there, waiting.  It all presses down on me until I feel crushed under the weight of every person and voice and insecurity and I have to put my hands up and wonder if I really want to die at all.  I say I do, under my breath when things go bad.  I say it almost every day.  I joke about it too much to be healthy.  But do I really mean it or am I exhaling empty threats?  

I keep imaging scenarios in which I'm faced with true death. What if a disgruntled customer comes in and points a gun at my face? Am I going to press my head against the barrel and tell him to do me a favor or am I going to piss myself and scream for mercy? If a truck comes barreling toward me, am I going to whip out of the way or am I going to stand still with a welcoming smile?  If I'm ever diagnosed with cancer, am I going to fight it or fall frail until I break apart?  Am I all talk and no toxins?   

I guess I'll never really know unless I'm confronted with the true possibility of biting it.  There's a wholly undiscovered world on the other side of a gun.  But I'm scared that world is as empty and cold as the one I'd be leaving and that's why I haven't pulled the trigger yet.  It's the unknown we fear, the possibility there really is a hell or there is nothing at all waiting for us.  We wake in emptiness and live in it and die in it and then we are extinguished.  We have to face the possibility that we are not important and our lives don't mean anything and neither do our souls.  We're all born and suffer and die and then grafted onto the Great Void and it's terrifying to think that there is no point to anything because pointlessness leads to chaos and chaos leads to death and no one wants to die. 

I have no roots, only regrets.  I have no wings, only chains.  I have nothing.  I think about my friend's nothing.  I think about Roger's nothing.  I think of the nothing hidden away inside everyone.  One day, I will be nothing.

I'm just exhausted.  It's that simple.  I'm tired and I want out.  I'm tired of living inside my head instead of living in the world. I'm tired of constantly feeling like there's nothing more to life than what I've already experienced.  I know there's more to life than what I've lived and that's almost worse because I know there's love and happiness out there and the fact that it dangles out of reach is what corrodes my insides.   My life is shallow and trivial and I've become petulant and pathetic.  I see the world through morose-colored glasses glued to my face.  The tentacles come out and lap at my face and neck and chest and sink thoughts of death and dying into me.  They slide the slime of self-hatred across my body, slicing at me until the light pours out.

I'm not ready yet.  But I'm making plans.  I've said to myself that I'll give it a few more years.  I'll give things a chance to turn around.  I'll try to turn things around myself.  I'll be proactive in producing better days.  But if I don't see a change, I'll have to get up and get out because I can't go on like this much longer.  And the consequences won't matter.  The words won't make a difference because I've come across worlds my whole life.  Words feel good on the surface but it's the actions, the feelings, the love behind them that make them effective.  And that's what's been missing all this time.  And it's kind of too late to correct that because that love would have kept me from ever getting to this point.  I'm beyond it now.  I'm coasting. 

One day, I will sever my hands so no one will be able to reach me or come running in their threadbare pajamas.  I'll be beyond help by that point.  In a lot of ways, I already am.

It'll take a miracle to move me.

thoracic cavity

Wind separated leaves from limbs in the darkness.  They pirouetted down onto the boy and girl as they lay in the grass beneath an old tree.  Ligaments wrapped together, he supported her neck with his shoulder and she slid her hand underneath his shirt.

"You're not as dead as you think," the girl said.

"Oh yeah?  How do you know?" the boy asked.

"Because of this," she said.  "Us here.  Now.  Sharing this moment.  Connected to the earth.  To each other.  Isn't it beautiful?"

"It's sufficient," he said as he brushed a fallen leaf from the girl's hair.  

"You can't fool me.  You wouldn't be here with me, like this, otherwise."

The boy shrugged.

"It's all of us," the girl said.  "You are alive because I am.  Because the world doesn't spin for the dead."

"Oh, God," The boy rolled his eyes, stifling a laugh.

"No, seriously," she said with a giggle.  "Your eyes sparkle like the shooting stars above us.  Your stubble is gritty like the dirt beneath us.  And your chest," she said as she gently pressed on his sternum, "is warm from the blood rushing through us.  I know you're alive because I can feel it in you."

"Actually, I just had a sip of this white chocolate mocha," the boy said, raising his Starbucks container.  "What you actually felt was it pass into my stomach.  That's all."

The girl stared with blank eyes as the boy drained his cup.

the vacant lot

"And I wish that plant life would grow all around me
so I won't feel dead anymore..."
-Owl City, Plant Life

"We're temporary anyway..."
-AFI, I am Trying Very Hard to be Here 

I keep saying it would be nice if I could have been successful at a young age, a youthful entrepaneur or something.  I keep saying it would be nice if I could have fallen in love.  I keep saying it would be nice if I had lost all this weight long ago and never looked back.

My life is not how I pictured it to be.  Sure, a lot of people's aren't but I think it presses down on me a bit more than it might others.  At least that's how it feels.

I think of how much time and energy I wasted on stupid things.  My youth is gone and I have nothing to show for it except stretch marks and a rapidly depleting bank account.

But then I keep thinking about the end of my life and how it won't matter.  The accomplishments, or lack thereof, won't make a difference when I'm decomposing.  The lack of success and notoriety and influence.  The lack of love and overage of love handles.

It would have been nice to have experienced the thrill of passion and exhilaration of adventure.  Maybe it would have given my life some measure of satisfaction and happiness but when my heart stops beating, the money won't matter where I'm going.  The love I shared won't matter where I'm going.  It'll all disintegrate.   

I suppose the influence and impression I could possibly leave behind would have been nice as well but ultimately, I guess that doesn't matter, either.  Some people leave a part of themselves behind for others carry on.  Some don't.  I most likely won't ever get to deposit myself into anyone's heart.  Maybe I'm just one of those who are quietly born, quietly live, and quietly die.

There's nothing wrong with that.  It doesn't mean I never meant anything. 

I was a person at one point.

deteriorating granny

"The world is sick
and all of us in it..."
-Showbread, I'm Afraid That I'm Me

Several months ago, my grandmother fell ill.  She had several episodes of failing health and had to be hospitalized a few times.  For a while, my heart jumped every time the phone rang.  I feared it was a family member telling us she had been put in a hospital again, or worse.

My parents and I visited her in the hospital during one of her stays and it was uncomfortable seeing her frail and hooked up to all the tubes and machines.  I stood there and didn't know what to do or say and just wanted to bolt.

She eventually got better, although she is thinner and more frail now.  I still worry we'll get a phone call late at night.

My other grandmother is slightly senile and her speech is becoming more and more incoherent to the point she can't get a full thought out of her mouth without stammering or stopping herself to clarify a statement.  I'm worried she's going to develop Alzheimer's.

There's dropping dead and then there's slowly deteriorating and dying.  I'm worried one grandmother is going to drop dead and the other will slowly melt away.

I see old people at work all the time and it kind of breaks my heart.  I see the old men with the dramatically curved spines and see-through skin and the old women with the milky eyes in wheelchairs being pushed by their children or shuffling in their walkers while their children patiently follow along.  They shake.  They stumble.  They need something to hold onto so they won't topple over.  I see oxygen tanks and forgetfulness.  I see exhaustion and sometimes I even see defeat in their wrinkled faces.  I'm scared that's going to happen to my grandmothers, that they will die in pieces, that all of their mobility will be stripped away, that their volition will vanish, that they'll be robbed of their reasoning.

I'm also terrified of that happening to my parents.  I almost can't bear the thought of my mom hunched over in a wheelchair with thin gray hair and skeletal hands.  I'm more worried about my dad since he drinks regularly and smokes heavily.  He's already battled with colon cancer and his brother died of lung cancer and yet he still lights up like he's sucking on sunshine.  It makes me angry and it makes it hard for me to want to get close to him because he's shellacking his lungs with tar and tearing up his liver with all the alcohol.

I'm also worried about my dog and cat.  They're both in the double-digit age now.  I'm always worried I'll come home to find Mom weeping over my dead cat's body.  Fortunately, neither one of them show signs of old age or failing health but it still crosses my mind regularly.  My mom  is enamored with our and when he passes away, she will be devastated.

And I think my fear of others dying comes from a fear of not knowing how to deal with everyone's grief.  I grew up in a household that discouraged expression.  I never saw my parents cry from pain or laughter.  They were stoic in their actions, language, and behavior.  Mostly.  And because I was never introduced to extreme feelings of sadness or joy, when I do encounter it, it makes me uncomfortable.  I don't know what to do or say. 

So when my grandmother's die, I'm going to have to deal with my parents' grief and I don't know how to do that.  When my dog and cat die, I will have to deal with my parents' grief and I don't know how to do that.  I'll just get that familiar need to bolt again, to run away until everyone stops hurting and everything is regular again.

I'm more worried about enduring everyone else's grief than my own.  That's because I don't feel particularly close to anyone.  Yes, I will be sad when my grandparents and pets pass away and I will cry but I'll probably move on easily.

And the reason I choose not to get too close to anyone is because I am also afraid to face my own grief.  If I get too attached, they'll one day leave or die and I'll be devastated and I don't know how to come back from that.  I've inadvertently carried on my parents penchant for not feeling too deeply.

I always imagined I would get a dog when I got out on my own and he would be my best friend.  The problem with that is the dog is going to die one day and I'm too afraid to mourn so I probably won't get a pet.  I'm also too afraid to mourn lost friendships so I don't have any friends.  I feel I already have enough hurt inside of me to burn on for the rest of my life so I don't need to add any more.  But if I never feel the deep sadness, I can't experience the great joy, either.  Is that a sacrifice I have to make to stay at an even level of feeling?

My fear of overwhelming grief has defeated the possibility of feeling overwhelming happiness.

No one wants a loved one to die and I think we all wonder if we can bear the pain of loss but people do it every day.  People are stronger than they think.  And I probably am, too.  I'm just not too keen to find out.

fearfully and wonderfully slayed, part 2

"Just let your faith die..."
-AFI, Sacrilege

I hear people say that unanswered prayers are still answered.  I keep thinking of that stupid footprints story.  Maybe you've seen me through all the pain and I never realized it or maybe I just made it on my own.  How will I ever know because you'll never tell me!  How can I keep the faith when there's no sign, no feeling, no subtle recognition to keep me going, to let me know I'm doing the right thing?  Am I just wasting my time? 
 
I kept praying, turned away from my sins, tried to think positive thoughts, focused on you and nothing ever changed.  I was empty on the inside and disappointed with the nothing in the sky.  Why couldn't I get a sign or a feeling of reassurance?  Why was there such a disconnect between me and you?  Was I still doing something so wrong as to keep you so far away?
 
I looked for you and only saw sadness.  I saw confusion over the course my life had taken.  I saw this little boy who sat alone, teary-eyed, wondering where the love and comfort was that was promised to him in a big book with big words and big promises if only he would believe in it all.
 
I believed in you.  But you didn't believe in me.

I put everything into college and it was the biggest financial and emotional mistake of my life, one that I will likely pay for until I die, which will probably be sooner than later.  Not only did college not work out but I barely scraped through graduation with all of my limbs.  My mind was destroyed as well as my spirit.

fearfully and wonderfully slayed, part 1

"If I ask you 'what is truth' will you be silent still?
My questions and doubts made a chasm
That I fear you can not fill..."
-Showbread, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things
 
I met up with God the other day.  He actually let me record our conversation and I have conveniently transcribed it for you.  We had a long talk, or actually I had a lot to say to him.  You might notice he was sparse with the responses, which wasn't surprising.  Below is our exchange.

Me:  What's up, Lord?  I know you're busy not answering prayers and and standing idly by as the world crumbles, yet somehow swooping in and saving certain individuals from damnation to propel the proselytizing of non-believers, but we need to have some tea and a chat.  You've been dodging me for twenty-six years so the very least you can do is spare me a few minutes. 

God:  *irritated, pointing to iPhone*

Me:  Sure, I'll let you finish your call.  Tell Jesus I said hi and that I miss him.

God hangs up after several minutes, looks at me, becomes morose.

Me:  Please, have a seat.  Can I get you a Snuggie?  Nescafe?  Comfortable?  Good.  This is gonna take a while.

God:  *rolls eyes*

Me:  I hate to be negative right from the start so let's get to the good stuff first, shall we?  First of all, I am an incredibly fortunate individual.  I guess you'd prefer the term "blessed".  Sure, we can use your terminology.  I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say you played some part in the positive aspects of my life.  I've never starved because my family couldn't afford food.  I've never been beaten by my mother or molested by my father.  I've never been left out in the cold or went without adequate clothing.  I've never had loved ones torn away from me by death or divorce.

My life is easy.

But I am absolutely miserable.   

I know this doesn't make much sense but please hear me out, okay?  As much as you might want to lambast me, I've already beaten myself up about it plenty of times.  I feel guilty and selfish because there's no real reason why I should be so miserable.  Looking at me from an outsider's point of view, I have no reason to be sad or even complain at all.  There are people who struggle twice as much as I do and aren't half as unhappy.  It's not something I can explain.  Believe me, I've tried to figure it out.  It's just those small things I've mentioned before, the small slices of pain life inflicts, the paper cuts that add up to amputation.

bullets or bitters?

"It feels so much like falling
dying while I wait to die
the fear of something or nothing
lonely empty lie..."
-Flyleaf, Much Like Falling

"I'm on my way to hell,
well I've tried
God knows that I've tried..."
-Brand New, Noro

"When are you leaving here?" a coworker asked me one day.

"5:30," I replied.

"No, I mean leave leave," he said.

"Oh.  Whenever I get up enough courage to take that entire bottle of Tylenol I have in my medicine cabinet."

He just laughed.  "Uh, no, I mean just quitting this job."

"Well, once that Tylenol has absorbed, that'll be my resignation."

He laughed again.  "You're warped."

"Yeah...I know.  Hence the Tylenol."

I was joking.  Mostly.  But even though I was kidding around, it occurred to me that I kid about suicide a lot.  And back before I was moved to a different department,  when I wasn't busy and the boss was away for the day, I often slipped to the edge of my counter and wrote.  One day, a supervisor came through, saw me, and said, "What are you writing there?"

Without missing a beat, I said, "My suicide note."  She too laughed and kept walking.  I guess she didn't take me seriously or maybe my coworkers all laughed out of discomfort.  It makes sense.  I can dish it out to others but I don't know how I would react if I found someone who could match my morbidity.  I might be a little uncomfortable, too.

I often think about dying, about getting out of this place, out of my skin, shimmying my way out of the mess I have made of my life.  If I'm left too idle, if I'm not distracted by television or music, I think about my life and it horrifies me.  It settles in that this is my life, this is what I've become.  It's hard to realize this is not practice.  I'm not test driving life.  I'm living it and I'm hating it.  When I sit back and really think about where I am and how I'm living, it makes me so despondent.  It's like, this is really it.  This isn't a fantasy.  This isn't a book or a movie where things are comically bad until I win the lottery or fall in love and everything is suddenly wonderful on the series finale.  There are days when I want nothing more than to just get out, you know, to just hit the eject button and be done.

There's always been a part of me that has longed for death, from being a little boy who prayed to God to kill me in my sleep so I would never have to wake up again to working at the electronic bingo facility a couple of years ago and nearly driving myself off the road.  I got into my car and made the hour and a half trip to and from the job and I often thought about crashing my car into a light pole or tree or even just accelerating as fast as my little Honda would allow until I swerved off the cement and into oblivion.  Maybe I'd lose control and flip.  My neck would snap, my spine would break, my brain would squish between the tree bark and transmission.  Or  maybe I'd just rupture my spleen and be taken to the hospital, stitched up and sent home to face the anger of my parents over totaling my car.

connection II

"I have no need of friendship, friendship causes pain, 
it's laughter and it's loving I disdain,
I am a rock, I am an island..."
-Simon and Garfunkel, I am a Rock

"I'm not a popsicle, I won't melt away..."
-Zolof the Rock and Roll Destroyer, Popsicle

The funny thing is, a lot of the time these people come to me.  They seek me out and tell me it will be okay and they're going to stick around and as soon as I believe it, they peace out.  I think it would be one thing if I went looking for that kind of pain but it often falls right into my lap.

I have enough trouble making connections with people and I usually try to keep my guard up but once I think someone is in it for the long haul, I allow them in.  People unnerve me enough as it is even when my guard is up so imagine how they invade my senses when I allow it.  But they tear down my insides and slip out of my skin and leave this kind of emptiness in their wake.  And I'm left dumbfounded.  What just happened?  Where did they go?  Why did they do this to me?

When someone says they will stick around, that's pretty much the kiss of death for me.  That's my signal.  My warning sign.  Exit immediately to your left!  Pain approaches!  Get out while you still can!

I've mentioned this before but it bears repeating.  In high school, many acquaintances entangled in messy relationships often told me they contemplated putting up impenetrable walls forever because of the hurt and rejection they endured in past relationships.  I thought that was silly and told them such.  You can't shut everyone out because you'll end up blocking someone special.

But I understand their defense mechanisms now.

No, I am not going to build a wall forever.  Maybe for just a little while.  Or maybe at least pull back.  If I had my crap together, I wouldn't go through these highs and lows with other people.  I wouldn't need anyone's confidence or affirmations because I would be self-sufficient but because I'm not, I have to rely on other people to feel like anything at all and that is a dangerous position to be in because people are not perfect.  They're fickle and unpredictable and it's no one's job to make you feel better about yourself.  I think in my case, most don't even know they're doing it and once they stop doing it, I feel bitter.  Why did you stop?  Why did you go away?  Don't you know how bad I need you?  But there's no way to win because I need them to define me but once I allow them to, they go in and cause me a lot of mayhem.

I just kind of stand around and do my thing and people come and pick me up.  I don't try to be swept away with their kindness.  I can't help if I'm an easy sell.  Maybe it's because I'm so desperate for companionship in just about any form I can get that I'll go for whatever someone's throwing my way.  Naturally, the insecurities set in long before that person really has any resonance in my life but once they do, I'm hooked.  I'm trusting.

I'm doomed.

I don't know how to resolve this problem.  I suppose if I was stronger, that would be resolution enough.  Another douche ditched me?  No big.  I can move on because my worth does not stem from their opinion of me.  Bah, if only it were that simple.  It is, really, if only I actually believed it.  But I can work on that.  And I should, pronto, before I pull one of those high school moves and shut everyone down to protect myself from hit-and-run relationships.

The really embarrassing thing is I'm not even talking about romantic relationships but also friendships.  Any kind of connection I have with someone, whether it be a special girl or a guy friend.  I like to feel wanted, needed.  Like I'm cared about, however I can get it.  But it never lasts and the first sign of sour things to come is when they tell me they're not going anywhere.  I can think of four people just right off the top of my head who have fed me that line and I don't think they lasted more than a month or so after their declaration.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that I'm simply a loner.  My mind is too fractured to form healthy relationships with anyone, whether it be friend or girlfriend.  It doesn't mean I can't be friendly with people.  It doesn't mean I can't elicit a smile or a chuckle.  Just not love.  Just not loyalty.  Just not anything deeper than a fart joke or conversations where I try to keep up with intellectual discussions and pretend I know what they are talking about.

I'm not even blaming anyone.  There comes a point where you can think that it's someone else's problem, that everyone else is screwing things up but when you consistently face failed relationships, you have to sit back and wonder if you aren't at least contributing a little bit.  Here is where I fully admit that I probably contribute a ton of trouble and therefore run people off.  That's cool.  I don't mean to.  I can't help it.  My head won't allow me to just be comfortable with the way things are.  I'm paranoid, never trusting anyone.  Why do they want to be friends with a fraud like me?  Why haven't they responded to my text?  Are they laughing with me or at me?

I don't know what's going to change my mentality.  I've realized over the years that mental damage is not easily treatable.  That's not to say it's impossible but it's hard enough to even recognize there's a problem in your brain.  We are often unaware of how we behave...or at least I'm usually unaware.  It's only through my lonely introspection do I begin to decipher the day and realize I screw up continuously.  But that introspection only takes me so far, only helps me identify what I think my problems might be.  But where does the resolution come in?  Therapy?  Prayer?  Friendship?  I've tried it all without success.

I often feel that I'll be stuck like this and I often don't even mind.  I've gone so long without really knowing someone on a deep, personal, and intimate level that it almost doesn't matter if I ever do.  You never know what you're missing until you get it but if I never get it, I'll never know.  Blissfully unaware?  

I used to feel the pull of people but now the call of the great void is the only comfort I can find.  

dead alive

"All I want is to feel alive, but I'm dying on the inside
And I've wasted all my time just waiting..."
-Attack! Attack!, Honesty

"They're not dead exactly.  They're just...sort of rotting."
-Dead Alive

Does anyone ever become completely hollow?  Who ever reaches that point and what becomes of them afterward?  I often wonder what has become of me and if I still have some emptying out to do.  It feels like every time I have nothing left to lose, something comes around and takes more from me, whether it be my job situation, losing my looks and my faith or struggling to just feel good enough to mean something to someone.  Have I finally been hollowed out and if not, how much farther until I fall?

Lately, I've been vaguely away of something stirring inside me.  It's not quite a heartbeat but perhaps the hope for one.  It's a residual pumping of blood and better times that echo inside the wasteland of my ribcage.  It's a feeling of skin splitting from sinew, a separation of flesh.  It's an aching in the bones like something gestating.

Have you ever felt simultaneously dead and alive, like your heart is pumping mud and your lungs are housing stale air?  That's where I am.  There are days when I want nothing more than to complete my macabre metamorphosis and rest in the dirt and then there are days when I feel it's possible to come alive again.

And there are days I actually want to.

But all of this back and forth between bereavement and breathing makes me feel bipolar.  I'm tired of my body being blurred between the black and the brightness.  It's annoying and another testament to my indecisiveness.  I can't even decide if I'm dead or just depressed.

twenty-six degrees of separation

"I am the lowest thing.  I am the bottom of the universe."
-Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

Last Friday night, yeah, we danced on tabletops and we took too many shots, think we kissed but I forgot...um, I mean I just had a birthday dinner with a high school acquaintance.  Our birthdays are two days apart and so it seemed appropriate to have a meal to celebrate at least one of our births.  The meal was enjoyable and mine was free because earlier in the day my supervisor gave me a gift card to the very restaurant we went to.

And then when we were done, we went to a funky yogurt shop with pastel striped walls and do-it-yourself yogurt assembly.  And I got hit on by the guy at the counter, some college-age kid with swooped hair and an hoop through his upper left ear.  Although he was a dude, it still felt kind of nice to have someone show some kind of interest in me.  It's been a while.  Damn, I've really reached a new level of lameness.  But the yogurt was good.

Saturday, I went Christmas shopping for my family.  I spent nine hours at the mall and various other retail stores.  It was kind of nice being off on my own, venturing out of the same four walls and the same arrangement of furniture and forlornness.  It was also weird, uncomfortable.  I've wallowed in my own world for so long that it felt uneasy to stretch myself past my perimeter.  Usually, when I have a day off work, I just want to stay at home.  Going out and doing things makes the time pass by faster, which means work comes sooner.  When I'm at home, the hours go by slower, allowing me to savor the reprieve just a little bit longer.  It's sad that I dislike my job so much I'm willing to sacrifice a social life in favor of feeling a prolonged sense of time away from work. 

The drive was relaxing, however.  An hour or so of smooth movement, singing at the top of my lungs and distancing myself from the damage of being at home and surrounded by damaging people.  I was in my own world in my car, the only place I felt safe back at school when things got tough.  It was my tank, my asylum, my music player and motivational speaker, my confessional, my best friend. 

Eventually, the urge to use the bathroom got the best of me.  As much as I tried to ignore it, I really needed to go.  I went from place to place, resisting the urge to pee at every stop, wondering where I could go and find a semi-private bathroom where I wouldn't be walked in on and have my urine flow suddenly stunted.  I'm pee shy. 

As I walked around the mall, I felt like a lot of people were looking at me.  I don't know if it was because of my usual paranoia or if there was a legitimate reason.  I was sweating pretty heavily.  It was cold outside so I wore a hoodie but inside each building, it was sweltering.  It probably didn't help that every place I went to was crowded with late shoppers.  The combination of my natural production of internal heat coupled with rowdy bodies bustling around was enough to drum up plenty of warmth.  Or were they looking at me because I was sloppily dressed due to the fact that my fluctuating weight won't allow for well-fitting clothing or if it was because I was so pale and shiny or if I was just an all together awkward arrangement of face, flesh, and bodily structure.

I stopped by and looked at all the store mannequins, perfectly sculpted, clothed, and posed.  I looked over the layered fabrics stretched across the headless torsos and liked what I saw.  I realized I still didn't know how to dress myself.  I never would have put all that stuff together but I could recognize when something worked.  It was like art and writing.  I didn't know how to make beautiful art or construct beautiful words and stories but I could recognize when it worked.  But I imagined putting those clothes on myself and realized it wouldn't work.  They were thin and hard-bodied models and anything looked good on them.  But when you get to a certain size, no matter how fashionable the clothing is, it just doesn't look right.  There's too much fabric, too little structure.

But we weren't all that different, the mannequins and I.  We were both pale and plastic pieces of nothing.  They were just dressed better.

Surprisingly, I didn't think about buying too much for myself.  I felt too fat to buy clothing and there wasn't really anything else that interested me.  I had enough electronics and music and hair gel.  I did walk into a bookstore, though, and want to buy up every book I came in contact with.  I can never shake the feeling of wanting my writing to belong to a book store, to walk along the aisles and be able to pluck my book out of one of the shelves.  It was an empty kind of comfort, a nice feeling to revel in if only for a moment.  A boy can dream.

My actual birthday was on Sunday and I didn't do anything.  I was tired from the long day before and just wanted to ring in my twenty-sixth in a sloth-like manner.  I think I accomplished that.

It was actually a pretty decent birthday.  The only sad part was realizing I was another year older and hadn't accomplished anything.  Physically, I get older but I'm still the same in every other aspect.  Same job.  Same lack of balance and faith and connectivity.  Still haven't lost that weight or written that book or found anyone or anything to make me feel alive again.  I still feel dead.

Happy birthday, you breathless body.  Merry Christmas, you corpse.

I can wish for things to be better in the new year.  I can try to make things better in the new year but if there was something I could do, wouldn't I have done it by now?  So, where does that leave me for my twenty-sixth year on this planet?  I've already wished and tried to make things better and it hasn't seemed to work out so I guess I have no other option than to just coast.  But isn't that what I've been doing all this time?  I've make a couple of feeble attempts at happiness, a stab or two at serenity but mostly I'm just too tired to try. 

I think I'll just read a lot of books and watch a lot of crappy horror movies and wait for it all to be over.

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.

on a cold dark street

"I don't know if I want to live, or if I have to...or if it's just a habit."
-The Walking Dead

The other day, I was standing at work and I thought to myself that I was getting closer and closer to not caring if I died.  Probably closest I've been in years, like since I was a kid and prayed for death in my sleep every night.

I've casually thought about offing myself before but nothing substantial ever came of it because of small factors like devastating my family, leaving them with my debts and the concept of everlasting hell kept me from pursuing expiration.

But lately I've been thinking more and more that I'm probably going to hell anyway so that's a moot fear.  The family devastation and debt is another thing, though.  If I were to die by other means than my own, I wouldn't have to feel bad because I wasn't the one who finalized the physical aspect of my demise.  Maybe I'd get hit by a bus or inherit my father's colon cancer and experience The Great Release guilt-free.

I can't really see my life getting better.  I know this is a gaping fallacy most suicidal people fall into, thinking life will never get better, that things will never ease up.  It's hard to see past your own pain.  You can't visualize the grand landscape of life when the world weighs down on your mind's eye.  But pain is fleeting, right?  Things do get better.  It won't always be this bad.  But who really knows that?  In my experience, things have only gotten worse the farther I've come.  High school was terrible and college was a colossal disaster, one I'm still paying for physically, emotionally and monetarily.   And because of that monetary consequence, I can't get my feet off the ground and move away to a place of better opportunity for jobs and friendship.  I'm stuck.

But what does any of it matter?  I don't have any passion for drawing or animating or writing.  Food, my only true comfort, isn't even all that great anymore.  And I don't feel connected to anyone.  I think about the people I used to care about, the ones who left me, and I can only feel a burning resentment toward them for ruining our relationships.

So, if I die then whatever.

But that night,  I actually had a dream where I was back in Savannah.  It was at night and I was just leaving an illuminated auditorium.  The light from the building spilled onto the cobblestone road, transitioning from white to yellow to gray.  The air was cold and blue and I walked down a series of brick steps and turned left.  The space in front of me was obscured by the dark night sky and expansive bushes.  I took a few steps and then hesitated.  I felt a sweeping sense of unease and decided to turn around and go the other way.

I thought to myself, "Who knows what's in those bushes.  This isn't a good part of town.  I don't want to get killed tonight."  Then I walked up another set of brick stairs and turned left into a water fountain.  Suddenly, I was barefoot and splashing in the icy cold water, looking down and watching the clear liquid froth at my feet.

Then, I remembered what I had felt in the waking world, about not caring if I was dead.  But I kept walking forward, still not wanting to risk the chance of encountering a gun or a blade in my fleshy stomach.

I woke up and had to wonder what it all meant.  Was it my subconscious telling me that I really didn't want to die or was it just a case of focusing on something so much that you carry it over into your dreams?  You know, like if you do something repetitive over an extended period of time like wrapping loose change or spending the day with a person and suddenly that loose change or that person appears in your dreams.

Was it just a case of life infiltrating dreams or am I still unsure about my existence?  I don't have much hope that it's a sign of anything significant.  Why should I?  Who's out there looking after me?  Who has something grand planned for my existence?  What do I have to live for?  I don't want to fall for another false hope.  I don't want to once again think things will get better only to be slapped down one more time.  No, I think I've finally cracked, fallen too far to see any way out.

The worst part, and the part that makes me feel the most selfish, is the fact that there are probably some people who do care about my fate but I don't care about their opinions.  It's the ones I want to care for me, the ones I want so desperately to love me, the ones I want to take an interest in my life and writing and thoughts and feelings, who remain indifferent.

Yeah, I'm definitely thinking it was a "loose change" kind of dream.

do you know a killer?

Several weeks ago, my sister's coworker, Jon, went to a man's house to sell him car and homeowner's insurance.

As Jon was assessing the house, the man's wife went up to him, a bit frazzled, her eyes enlarged with fear, and said, "Don't sell him any insurance.  He's going to burn this house down and then kill me."  No doubt, Jon was startled by the statement.  What do you do in that situation?  Do you take her seriously or blow it off as her being crazy or paranoid?  Jon decided to shrug it off and sold the man the insurance anyway.

He didn't think too much about the lady with the large eyes until he got a phone call two weeks later.

It was the man.

"You can take my wife off the policy," he said.  "She committed suicide a few days ago."

Jon, concerned, called the police to let them know what the man's wife had told him but they refused to look into it, saying the case was officially closed.

.
.
.

So...he killed her.

Happy Halloween.

in bed, breathing

"Only the lonely
know the way I feel tonight
only the lonely
know this feeling ain't right..."
-Roy Orbison, Only the Lonely

For the longest time, I thought I had risen above love.  I thought I had defeated loneliness and felt content with just being by myself.  I didn't fool or force myself into believing it.  I genuinely thought I was over love, better off even.  Naturally, the pangs of loneliness would pop up on occasion but I always shrugged them off.  They never lasted long enough to cause permanent damage.  I felt I was already about as hurt as I could be so how much more damage could they cause?  I knew I'd never be able to get rid of the loneliness completely but I was confident I could control it.

But now, I feel the loneliness is crushing me like a trash compactor.  Several factors, such as my crumbling faith in God and realizing the youth at work have close knit friendships, have contributed to my ever-increasing isolation over the past several months.  I looked around at work and realized I was one of the older ones, an outsider coming into this group of teens who all started together.  On the other side of the spectrum we had the older supervisors with families and 401Ks.  And I was this glob with nothing to grasp, too old for the young crowd, too young or the older group, suspended in a timezone that no one could relate to.

When I had people to talk to, I could keep the emptiness at arm's length.  I had people I could connect with while in college.  They were in the same situation as me.  We could all relate.  We were wide-eyed and working toward something.  My roommates were good.  I had a few ginger ladies I enjoyed.  And then there was my special gal Chasity, who was with me from the beginning to the end.  And someone else who was with me long before that.  But my roommates got jobs, the gingers stopped talking to me and Chasity got engaged and moved out of the country.  And as for the other one, well, that just didn't end too well...

And slowly, I dropped off everyone's radar.

I knew communication wasn't a one-way process so I did try to keep up with them.  I called, texted, IMed and Facebooked.  And they reciprocated.  For a while.  And then they all slowly faded out.  I suppose without the college connection to keep us together, none of us really had that much to talk about.  It was a cycle I had began noticing early on.  Fellow students talked to me while in class but once the quarter was over, I never heard from them again.  The trend continued when I started working.  As soon as one of the lucky few were able to move away to college or find another job, they stopped talking to me.  I suppose I'm a good coworker or classmate, but nothing more, nothing anyone would want to continue a relationship with once the job ended or the class was completed.

And even earlier than that, I didn't talk to anyone from high school after we all graduated.  I keep up with one or two people but their schedules are so busy it actually is more convenient for them to get in touch with me since I never have anything going on.  It's not that I don't try but they are too busy with their pursuits, which I understand.  I suppose this is what it feels like to grow up and lose contact with people who once held a special place in your mind.  Maybe there isn't such a thing as lifelong friends.  The beauty in being connected to such a wide variety of people is that they open your world to so many different things.  The beast is that, because they all are so different, they end up going in different directions, scattering out and leaving you alone.  And while it's the natural order of things, I believe I have stumbled on my part of the deal.  Friends come and go and usually people make other friends to fill the spaces of those left behind.  I haven't quite managed to fill those voids.

A big problem with living here is there's nothing to do.  I live in a redneck infested cesspool of pregnancy and narcotics.  Girls grow up to become nurses only because it's a relatively simple job to get into.  And the guy's grow up to drill offshore.  And there is nothing wrong at all with either occupation but the sad part is how people can't see beyond the small bubble of their residency.  And so they take those jobs just to remain inside the bubble.  Dreams and aspirations usually fall by the wayside as soon as they graduate high school because it's time to be an adult, to grow up and raise a family and pursuing dreams doesn't fit into the picture.  And those who do pursue their dreams often leave their bubble and never come back.  I feel I'm in a weird predicament because I am one of the dreamers yet I'm trapped in my bubble with those I have no interest in getting to know.

Most of the girls my age are already married or pregnant.  Most of the guys are douche bag hicks.  I have nothing in common with any of these people.  And therefore I have no friends.  And romantic entanglements are even harder to come by.  As mentioned earlier, most girls are knocked up or knocked around by their boyfriends/husbands.  So, there's not a great selection as far as romantic prospects go.  And at this point in the game, what do I even want out of a relationship?  What am I looking for?  To settle down?  To have a few flings?  And what kind of person will it take to revive me?  Friendship?  Romantic relationship?  Sexual compatibility?  Same cynical attitude?  I've wanted it for so long that I didn't put much thought into envisioning what form it would take.  I always assumed a certain way but now I'm just not so sure.

The lack of friendship, as well as romance, has caused a rekindling of that ache, that need to be someone's number one.  I feel more alone than I ever have in my life.  I have no friend to lean on, no partner to stay in bed with, and barely a God to pray to.  I am immeasurably lonely.  In fact, I think it's hard for most people to comprehend it.  Sometimes I don't think I can, either, but when I say it, people don't seem to realize how deep it sinks into me. 

Maybe this feeling is just another pang, just more intense and longer-lasting.  Maybe this, too, will pass.  But I can't help but thinking by acknowledging it, I'm opening the way for more pain.  I also can't help but to think how I'm missing intimacy in my life.  I need to know someone else's lips and love and life.  I haven't had the best opinion of people in general for a while now but I know there's got to be more than what I've observed.  I want to explore that, to feel something more than surface flushes of heat.  I want to be able to talk to someone on the phone or hold them or have them go with me for a drive.  I want someone I can watch horror movies with and talk about death and dreams.  I want someone I can show my writings to, someone I can share a book with, someone I can kiss and cry to.  I've never had that.  No one has gotten to know me past casual chatter.  And that's driven a wedge between me and everyone else.  My blog knows me more personally than anyone in my life and I think there's a great deal of sadness in that.  There's just no one to turn to, physical, spiritual or electronic.  That's not to say I haven't ever come close.  I've almost had that.  But almost doesn't assuage the agony.

I can't deny it anymore, can't turn it away despite my rejection of love.  I'm lonely.  As much as I thought I was beyond human emotions, I'm not.  When I died, I tried to bury all of that while attempting to remain above ground myself.  I'd love to be in love.  I'd love to have someone to love me.  I walk this path singular, solitary, sick.  I wouldn't mind having a hand to hold along the way.  But that doesn't mean it will happen or that I am capable of having it happen to me.  I'm too selfish and full of unjustified bitterness and hatred to have a fulfilling relationship.  I'm too insecure, too indecisive, and too paranoid.  I can't have it all but I crave it so much.  I want to be loved, supported, recognized.  I just don't want to fall into the fire without anyone ever really having known who I am.

I think about the majestic qualities of love, how it bubbles up and grows on a grand scale.  I think about the power of love and how it can change lives.  And that's nice but sometimes I crave the simpler aspects of it.  Really, all I want is to be one of two bodies in bed, breathing.  I don't know what the warmth of someone else's skin feels like.  It's strange to me when I hear it on television or in the movies, how people curl up together and comment on the comforting warmth.  I guess I forgot that bodies can be that way.  I had simply become accustomed to mine running cold.  I just want to know someone else, to experience someone's chest rising and falling next to mine, to share such a small space, to breathe in the same air, to cradle, to be held, to feel connected to something for once.  I want to feel the function of a heartbeat, to know that something is alive within myself and someone else, to feel it speed up and slow down, a crashing thump thump thump against my ear.  A laugh.  A breath.  A sigh.  I want to tap into the most basic of human needs, desires.  And that's a need to feel warm with someone else, to love, to be loved, to be wanted and cared for.

To not be so damn alone.

I want to dive into humanity, to revel in feeling alive again.  I want to be a part of the population.  To love and be loved is not to make a connection with just one person, but to connect with whole world.  You know what everyone else feels, needs, fears.  Even if the feeling doesn't last, if the person walks out or is taken away, you've been there, you've felt it and smelled it and tasted it and had it wash over you and cleanse you and when you walk down the street or shake someone's hand or smile and wave as you pass by, you know them more than you might realize.  You understand them, have been there before, might be there again, can sympathize with their plight.  Because it is your plight as well.  It is the plight of every creature that breathes and even some that don't.  It is love.  It is lust.  It is an intense attraction.  It is the need to feel, the urge to belong.  It's built into us like our blood.  And once you've known true love, I think you are irrevocably changed.  I've stayed the same for far too long.

I go to bed and breathe in the fan to give my lungs something to do.  I stretch out and bury my face into the pillow, tunneling away from the world, waiting until the darkness sweeps over me for one more night.   And I wonder what it would be like to be escorted into dreams, to have a hand pull me into sleep instead of the television, wonder what it would be like to drift back from dreams, ascend to the surface of consciousness, buoyant in my bed and bound by flesh and bone instead of being flanked by microfiber and flannel to warm me.