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I’m Going to Kill Myself

Quicksand, sinking into a hole that consumes a little more of you each day. The more you fight it, the faster it starts to give around you. You dare not reach out your hand for help in fear that you will pull that person down with you. All you can do is stand silently, making whatever mental resolutions you can for yourself before inevitability claims your last breath.

I’m a tired soul floating around in a world that operates at the speed of light. I try to match it’s speed in protest to my body, proclaiming without words “Look at me world! I do exist! Let me walk through the gardens of Eden and life!” Small reflections to the life I once lived. It’s hard to compare, but if I had to, I would compare it to what an early Alzheimer’s patient must feel as his memories slowly (but surely) escape him. It is the feeling of a man slowly drowning to death by a mysterious force within him; and even worse, the world does not understand.

When you’re dying, the living no longer understand you. Nature’s eye thrusts its gaze upon you like the eye of Sauron and looks to prune you from its garden. Whether it’s physically, or socially, it does not matter. Nature wins in the end.

The world is evil. I know so because I feel that evil inside of me. It manifests itself as fear, desperation, and self doubt, exploding out of me and consuming the people nearby. I am a vessel to the evil genie that lives inside of me, waiting for a moment of weakness to reveal itself.

I don’t want to hurt anybody anymore. I don’t want to feel this pain and malaise anymore. I want to be washed from the guilt I feel for choosing to exist on a sinking ship. I want to spare my loved ones from the years of grieving that will happen if I choose to survive. My death will bring more people together than my life, that I am sure.

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Whirlpool

I’m swirling around the whirlpool, flirting passed the center depths I will inevitably be pulled into... but not quite arriving. 

Purgatory, limbo, the countless doctor’s waiting rooms I’ve waited in hoping for some peace of mind and leaving disappointed every time. The world makes more money when the people like me are silenced. I want so badly to be well, but every time I reach for that next groove in the mountain... it gives and drops me closer to the ground below. It gets to the point where I start to wonder how much worse can plummeting to the ground be in comparison to a personal hell involving a person trying over and over to get well and getting the same result. Reminds me of one of those sick ancient parables where the guy gets his eyes plucked out of him every day.

I think the only thing keeping me going are my loved ones. I feel like I’m only sticking it out for them, and only to prove to them I tried. When I close my eyes I see immeasurable violence. There is no rest here, only the grinding of teeth and the whitening of knuckles. I always wondered why people decide to kill themselves; now, it seems more peculiar that they don’t.

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The Coward, the Warrior, and a Fine Line

It starts as this tension in your chest, right around bottom of your sternum between your heart and your gut. Maybe there is something to the placement, your Father’s gut instinct waging war with your Mother’s forgiving heart. What results is a warzone of conflicting ideologies; the heart waiving the big white banner of safety and inaction while the gut moves in swiftly and mercilessly. I’ve felt it for all 30 years of my life and still haven’t found a way to bring both sides together to sign the treaty.

I get these moments where I want to cry so badly, up until the point where I can feel my eyes start to water. Then... nothing. It’s like my mind keeps walking to the edge of a mountain to jump, but then pussy’s out because it wanted the attention more than the result. Maybe that’s not a perfect example.

On a crasser note, maybe it’s more like having issues with intercourse. You feel the sensations leading up to the grand finale, but right when you’re about to enter Nirvanna, it never arrives. You just are left with this tense feeling that promises relief but never delivers. The blue balls of emotion.

I just feel so trapped. Every emotion I feel is met with a conflicting adversity. Nothing feels valid. My roommate is a sociopathic man child, but instead of allowing my gut to wage war I side with my heart who desires a stress free living environment for healing. When my doctor shrugs off the countless hours of research I’ve put in to this untraceable disease that I have, I want to “help” him understand how much of a sheltered gaslighting asshole he is. When my mom tells me how much better I’m getting in order to overshadow the pain and torture I am constantly in, I want to tell her that if she ever does that again than she will never see me again.

Then again, what makes me so special? I get so lost in the spinning circus of my mind that I forget that there are other people on the rides. There are people handling much worse diseases out there way better than I am; to the point where it is non-existent to the peripheral/public eye. To have that courage, self restraint, is to arrive as the true man. The masculine monk of the modern age.

I think I want to shave my head.

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Therapy 3 (Removing Bandages)

1. Knowing that I have been insulated with a privileged life, has this led me into an existence of melancholy that has no foundation?

I have always been drawn to the melancholy. Blame it on my upbringing of suppressive emotion from the hardened baby boomer Irishmen around me or on the self-detrimental music I listened to (probably symptomatic of reason #1). In my more religious days, the idea of being sick without a cure always brought an egocentric tear to my eye. I’ve always resonated with the idea of being deprived and stuck on a hopeless ship with no ending destination. Does this fantasy have any merit?

Relatively speaking, probably not. Yes, this life is built on the foundations of pain that we build houses on; creating illusions of safety and decorating them in distracting ways. I grew up in a part of the world though that was well nourished, both literally and figuratively speaking. My parents had flaws, of course, but relatively speaking these flaws were incredibly minor in nature. In fact, the loving/sheltering nature of my upbringing is probably my biggest flaw, since I lack the understanding of how dark the darkness can get. I misperceive my shadow as epitome of darkness, when there are far darker dungeons of pain that exist. I try to understand the hierarchy of pains, sometimes successfully, but even then I still lack the feeling that reinforces the idea and brings it to life.

So why not use the positive force in my life to become a beacon of hope to others, or at the very least not pretend that my life is any harder than anyone else’s? Well, thats where it gets complicated. 

Maybe I’m trying harder with all of the self improvement actions I’m taking. I rarely speak of my demons and are way more present for others (for the most part, I think I’m trying). Maybe just slowing down and stepping into the shoes of others and being more realistic about the depth of my own problems is the keys. Being conscious with the realities around me.

2. In what circumstances have I ended relationships with friends and girlfriends? Were they worthy of these measures?

This is going to be hard.

Rachel: Lack of trust. I always assumed she was up to no good. This was textbook overthinking mixed with a large heaping dose of insecurity. The first time I broke up with her was because I thought I could do better. The second time was the opposite.

Amy: We were not compatible, though I wanted us to be. She had a kind heart, was very caring, and on paper was an ideal companion. However, everything personality and value related just did not compute. I always went into a meeting with her with a “lets make this a good night” attitude and left emotionally exhausted from a night of personality dissonance.

Relationships:

Lex: This one is two sided. I did not trust Lex, similar to Rachel, but there were things to not trust. I always had the sense that Lex was up to no good, and I don’t think that was a misguided notion. Lex loved conflict and drama, and spent most of her time digging into the shit of others. I can’t imagine this did not spill into our relationship as well, although it’s hard to tell where.

I also was not very fair to her. I, again, was very insecure, and would constantly be checking her location (one of my more alarming qualities). She was obsessed “fitting in”, and would put scandalous pictures on her social media for attention. It was fair for me to have issue with this, but I would present it in ways that were not fair to her. I should have communicated it in a simple and non-judging way, which I don’t think I did.

It’s weird, I loved spending time with her but I don’t think I actually loved her. She was something fun to experience but was not good for me, like the Rick and Morty episode where Rick sidetracks Unity from her purpose to have a good time. 

I also just run away from conflict whenever possible, which I did in that relationship. Most issues we had were only addressed when they boiled over.

It was a game to keep Lex. I had to be somebody I wasn’t (or someone I was not yet).

Friendships:

James: It was a wise decision to let go of this relationship. James was self destructive, and worse, destructive to those he was around.

Jon: I don’t blame Jon for removing me from his band. I was not a man of solutions, just problems based on my unpolished philosophies of what music should be. We innately did not see eye to eye of what art should be and it let me effect how I saw him as a person. He also was not communicative towards the end, which I can’t blame him for. Many of his faults were ones I dealt with too, which is probably why we were so close in the beginning before we blew up in spectacular fashion. My youthful whimsical idealism and his old hardened traditionalism would never see eye to eye.

Colin: Colin was caring and a lot of fun to be around. We fundamentally were very different people, however. Emotionality and Self-Made Self Acceptance were important to him, whereas I believed more in a more reserved self growth that came from disciplinary action to day to day life. We would have conversations that would really open my eyes to places that were blind to me, which I appreciated with his view of. He just was not a very disciplined person to be around, and I felt that create a rift towards him. I was also just way too close to him all the time, and felt myself needing space even when he was intruding. 

He also made several questionable decisions against me; which I both understand. I forgive him, but I cannot trust him the way I could before.

Teague: This one is complicated. I think he had a lot of expectations of me that I did not live up to. He wanted me to be forgiving to issues I did not understand. I also did things that questioned my character to him, which I think I understand. I probably looked pathetic in many of my decisions, which is probably why I hid so much information from him. There were things he did that were questionable, but maybe they weren’t the same in degree. Does dating a 18 year old just as questionable as being abusive to your dog, doing a lot of drugs, or attacking the ones closest to you? There was a degree of growth though that he was experiencing, and maybe he clumped me into the parts of himself that he needed to let go in order to grow. I can get that. Still, I can’t help but feel there is an essence of blind destruction that came from him letting me go from his life.

I think I get too close to people. Maybe I just get too close to the wrong people. I think most of my best friends have had fundamentally different approaches to life. They’ve also taken to vices that are in some ways self destructive, such as drinking or drugs. Because I don’t have the inclination to go there, thats why I push away. Theres probably a much more caring way, but its much easier to leave something than to fight for it.

One last question that I (personally) feel needs to considered as well:

3. What does my current/past company say about me as a person? What does my attraction to the history of people with mental illness say about me?

4. What if I am, in fact, a leech of “the light of others”?

Listen, feel what they’re feeling, don’t offer solutions.

Lack of exerted boundaries

Deject people using cold fish tactics

Maturity issues.

Certain issues should be valued in certain degrees.

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Therapy 2 (Mirrors)

My mind is a broken mirror, reflecting the parts of me in no comprehensible pattern. The pieces all mosaic into both fractions of light and fractions of horror. I reach to pull the reflections of darkness from within the frame, only to cut my hand on its sharp edges. I do this several times, each time wrapping my hand up to stop the bleeding. Sometimes I control the bleeding with the lazy rags of distraction, other times with the careful bandaging of acceptance. I choose the rags more times than not, which many times leads to either mess or infection. It is only with careful hands that are trained from bandaging that I can reach into the mirror and take a more appropriate approach to removing the fragments. 

If I take out all of the fragments, what will be left?

Will the mirror fall apart?

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I had my therapist read the email I sent to my best friend Teague, as well as Teague’s response to the email. After just reading the first paragraph of his first (of seven) emails, his immediate reaction was that Teague was an abuser. He then went on to say that Teague seemed to be a sleep deprived hurting man that minimizes the pain of others under the guise of a father-like complex. He also expressed that the fact Teague felt the need to send seven emails was a sign that there was more hidden underneath his words than what was actually being said.

I told my therapist that I wanted him to read these emails because, although Teague’s wording and actions were unforgiving of that of a friend, there were still glimmers of truth about me sparkling through the molten lava of pain that he was expressing. Namely, that I do live in a safe bubble of privilege that has allowed me the distraction from the darker parts of myself. Scott gently nodded his head in approval, then continued to read the email.

By the time he was done reading this “exhortation of my damnation”, Scott again reinforced his original sentiment that Teague was an abuser that was deriving approval for his actions with people who did not know me. Scott then took a deep breath, before bringing up two questions that he felt was important for me to ask myself concerning the “truth” in Teague’s words: 

1. Knowing that I have been insulated with a privileged life, has this led me into an existence of melancholy that has no foundation?

2. In what circumstances have I ended relationships with friends and girlfriends? Were they worthy of these measures?

One last question that I (personally) feel needs to considered as well:

3. What does my current/past company say about me as a person? What does my attraction to the history of people with mental illness say about me?

4. What if I am, in fact, a leech of “the light of others”?

TBC...

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Therapy

Does your emotional maturity match the age of the woman you date?

Do you intentionally ignore people with the intent to harm?

“You’re not my girlfriend, I don’t need you texting me over and over again demanding a response”

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The Shadow

The devil lives inside of me. 

He longs to get out; to wreck havoc on the world around me.

I keep him locked away in heavy walls with several locks with keys I have thrown away.

My friends, family, and lovers all accept this great facade, completely unaware of the apathetic beast that rages to destroy them.

Even knowing this, he whispers in my ear and distorts my reality. 

Is it possible to kill your shadow? or must you teach it to walk behind you?

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Spiraling - The Art of Spinning Out of Control

That feeling when you’re driving on slippery ground and your car starts to spin. You know you’re in trouble, but to what extent is yet to be determined.

Stretch that gut wrenching feeling for the span of a few days. I have made my bed with the hearts of others; assuming, in my ignorance, that they would not be coming back for them.

I can see why people with anxiety describe it as a “spiraling” effect. Spiraling has such an irrational connotation to it though. Isn’t it natural to spiral out of control if you’re in the wrong?

I need to look at this objectively. I need to be honest about these things to myself. Right now the sweet nectar of emotion is coursing through my body and is causing me want to act through impulsive:

You met an 18 year old and became romantic with her. This felt wrong, not because of the feeling itself, but by the viewpoint of others. I guess there were a few things here and there that provoked this notion that she was too young for you, such as the Disney movies, perky optimism to everyone, showing her talents; but were these traits of a young person? Or were these things just thrown under that label? 

I’ve met much older people than her show much more immature traits than the ones she has.

I remember when Lex told me that I was “too old for her”. It felt like a cheap excuse for incompatibility.

-

I woke up with a foggy head from a night of drinking. My brain feels like the processor of a computer that had overheated all night and was just now being restarted. Around me are familiar friends that I have known for over a decade now. They all seem to look the same as before, as age sneaks up on us like water coming to a gradual boil. A before and after picture would quickly dismiss any claim that we hadn’t changed in the last decade. 

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Withdrawal.

I woke up this morning to this sobering thought:

“Your life is a story, and you are its only writer.” 

What then? Will you fool around with the unimpressive side characters that inhabit your scenes? Subject yourself to their insignificant ways until you yourself become the side character to your own story? Or will you do greater things that are deserving of the turning of a page from your readers?

Who is the character to my story now? 

A coward who is so afraid of confrontation that he runs away from anything that makes him remotely uncomfortable. This is nothing new: I remember retreating to my best friend Teague’s house after my Dad would lecture me on my “moody behavior” in highschool. I don’t remember what the source of this moodiness was back then: maybe I felt as though I didn’t belong and was taking it out on my loved ones. They ultimately would be the ones that would be most affected by these lashings of self-loathing. Their pain would prove that I was at least important enough to strike an emotional pain into the heart of another. 

An evil shaking of the gold pan to find a nugget of self-worth I so eagerly desire.

Even now, I still feel this temptation. Whether it’s not responding to a friend’s “text-lecture” on creating a lifestyle filled with positive influences (TV-shows, music, etc), or to my parents seemingly overbearing “check ups” on their dog I am dog-sitting (who is more than capable of being alone for a few hours). As these instances happen, the “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” theme song starts plays within the background of my mind and the million dollar question is presented by the host of my consciousness:

Will I:

A. Politely accept their positions to avoid any potential confrontation? B. Argue my feelings towards why I don’t agree with what they are doing in that moment; prolonging this seemingly unnecessary conflict? C. Do not respond.

There is a fourth option, which is never the most obvious. It’s probably because it takes the most work to perform successfully. It’s a concoction of critical thinking, an assessment of pride, and the potential killing of one’s self.

D. Walk within the shoes of their reality to gather an unadulterated understanding of what they are saying.

Even constructing that sentence took an extra 30 seconds of work, which usually is enough to prohibit me from doing the right thing. With all of the virtuous traits I trick myself into believing I have,  the one thing that will mark the cause of death of my soul is my inability to fight the initial pains of critical thinking. 

I don’t remember a lot from highschool Physics, but concept that did stick with me is that it takes more energy to start motion than to maintain it. 

My mind is composed of hills and valleys scattered upon a semi-linear plane. Crested on these hills are large, dark, metal balls. At the bottom of each hill are these large, impassable mental “brick walls” that keeps me from progressing in the pilgrimage of self-growth. The size and design of each ball is intimidating in nature, but experience proves that they can be moved. Is it laziness or fear then that keeps me from trying?

It is a gift to find these mental breakthrough opportunities, as some go through life unable to find these sources of anxiety. It is imperative that I train myself to attack these barrier-breakers when I come across them, without wasting too much time resting in their shade. 

To be the champion of my own cerebral olympic games. 

To be a gold mental-ist? 

(okay, there’s a good place to stop).

A friend once told me: “Aim for respectable behavior, not passable”.

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The Fox and the Wolf

After a season of being lost at sea, I have washed up on the shores of the lotus flower. I feel as though I am in a state of ecstasy, with no regard for the future or past.

After only a few minutes of being on this island, a fox greets me with fox-like dancing. She hops from side to side in both excitement and nervousness. She is young; and even though her aura is pleasant, there is a hint of self-doubt that I feel in her as I watch her carefully. Every time she dances or sings to the other creatures of the island, it’s as though she is trying her hardest to prove that she belongs with them. With every smile is a glance of that wide-eyed anxiety that I feel within her. She is an imposter to herself, a stranger trying to fit into her own skin.

I walk deeper into the island. As I did so, I felt the stare of another animal in the forest. A she-wolf; who keeps a safe distance between me and herself. She stares with a trained apathy in her eyes; years of conditioning to the statues and devils that she had grown up around. She is drawn to the strength of my stillness and silence. She mistakes the obliviousness to my surroundings as a carelessness to the danger around me. Like a curious feline, she silently tiptoes to my side; keeping me beyond an arms length. When she speaks, she speaks in riddles; protecting herself from any verbal foothold that I may potentially grab a hold of. I catch a glance of her greenish-grey eyes, and she looks away.

She is a hunter who seeks a companion. Her heart is rusting and cold from years of neglect from the other wolves she had grown up with. The only thing she feels any sort of excitement for is the intellect and bloodlust it takes to take out her prey. She has reduced life into a carnal game that she can control; and within that control is the only comfort she allows herself to feel.

Both of the creatures are beautiful in their own nature. Every time I enter their respective domain, they hover to my feet and offer me their nest to rest in. I feel like a vagabond who has forgotten the training of my ancestors and do not know which home to stay in. I pace the island as both animals watched me, unimpressed by my hesitation.

A treasure hunter who has lost his map deep within foreign lands.

It’s possible that neither of these houses should be my home. The fear of giving up something potentially beautiful goes to war against the anxiety that there may be something better out there. How am I to know though? How long should we travel before we can rest, with confidence, knowing that we went as far as we could go?

I feel sick. A wolf, an imposter, the devil’s surrogate. Maybe thats why I am drawn to the wolf and the familiarity of her darkness. It’s also what makes the fox so appealing though, since I know the path of the wolf leads to nowhere but a lonely tomb.

She asked me last night: “Are you someone who craves the attention of women, and will do anything to get it?”

“I don’t think so?”

Was I ever a good man, or just someone who never had the opportunity to do evil? Temptation surrounds me and I feel too weak to resist it. I drink it in and justify it with 2-cents worth of entitlement.

“I slept on my back in the shade of the meadowlark. Like a champion, get drunk to get laid, I take one more hit when you depart.”

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Cinder

The delusions of the mind dress up in the disguises of truth. Only when these conniving creatures cause you trouble will they take off their masks and reveal their true nature.

Blood boils so hot that my body begins to tremble like the awakening of a dormant volcano. Tyranny shackles my soul within the lofty limitations it so whimsically produces. The worst part is that there is no good reason for this, no safe ground to put my objections to rest in. Just pure, unadulterated injustice. 

The only silver lining I can find solace in is the knowing that many face much more horrible acts than this; that this is just a simple slap on the wrist compared to the water-boarding of evil that some will be put through in this life.

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When God Invented Sex

God spoke to me last night.

It was spoken in two ambiguous images. What was strange was that they both were sexual in nature.

Madison Pinnizotto is in my room, resting her slender, yet beautiful, naked body on top of me. She’s whispering sweet nothings into my ear. I penetrate her, and she holds me tightly and moans in a sound that I can only describe as pure innocence. This image feels like the conjuring of what innocence is defined as in my head.

A flash takes me to a couch in the middle of a crowd. The crowd is shrouded in darkness, while a solitary light hovers over the velvet two-seater in the middle of the room. There, a dark naked woman is sitting in a submissive position on her hand and knees. The crowd waits silently. I, standing near the front of the crowd, feel compelled to walk slowly to behind where the woman is sitting. In a moment of mindless impulse, I penetrate the woman. As I do so, Socrates appears from the crowd and begins to lecture a lesson to the people, who appear to be his students.

I wake up. I feel emotionally sober, as if everything I have felt in the last 28 years has been a facade and that the only things that matter to me remain.

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She was a bad, tainted person for you. She made you somebody you weren’t. There is no loneliness in being alone other than your pride scratching at your insides. You should accept goodness and innocence as it is rare.

I need to go to church.

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Wounded Rabbits

You texted me today.

7pm, after 8 hours of radio silence. I knew something was wrong. I think the last thing you had texted me the night before was “you know, you don’t have to try to be so cute because it blows my mind how much you already are.” What a lovely thing to say to someone; almost as lovely as feeling your hands slip gently down my arms as you whispered sweetly into my ear the other night. It was probably an impulsive thing to say this early on in knowing me, but it made me wonder whether such beautifully soul-warming things should be kept in such cold structured boxes. What if they are never given the chance to come out? What if they come out too late?

I had a feeling that your dad had lost his shit about you seeing me. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he wasn’t such a piece of shit. The things I can imagine he did to you fills me up with a restless rage that paralyzes the soul.

Paralyze. What am I to do? Give her empty words of hope because I am too afraid of the consequences of what will happen if I continue to pursue this? I feel like a boy petting the mane of his horse before it’s taken to the backyard to get shot. Does this make me a weak man, or a survivalist? Is there a difference?

I don’t know who to talk to about this. Maybe there is an answer in that. The thick fog of disapproval I feel from these hypothetical conversations might suggest that I am under the spell of a woman again.

Your touch though. If your touch isn’t the touch of God, then he doesn’t exist.

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The Hunt

A tumultuous wind brings foreign things. 

I drive cautiously on the glassy road dressed in leaves and debris from a storm that has, just recently, hurled itself away from the area. I’m too tired to know the root of my tiredness. Maybe it was the shitty weather, the habitual drinking, or some sort of deeply sinister “lazy-brother” personality hidden within my self conscious. Still, I glided across the glassy roadway as my mind let go of the wheel for a while. 

You are so beautiful, it’s alarming. 18 years old; there’s a subliminal caution that comes with that. Is the danger in that I will ruin you, or that you will ruin me? Should I have found love by now, and my desire for you is a tell for my lack of maturity? The way you put on those ice skates for me cut through my soul like butter and aroused me like the first touch of a woman should.

It’s only a matter of time until I sink my teeth into your perfectly soft unadulterated skin, or your youthful self loses interest. I guess I’ve began to accept my fate as the black wolf, wandering from home to home, mindlessly tearing apart everything in its path. Still, the nagging voice that fuels this inconsolable hunger won’t stop whispering to the back of my mind:

“You’ve mistaken yourself for the hunter, when in all reality, you are the hunted.”

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ENDLING

“Chaos is order yet undeciphered.”

________________________________________________________________

I don’t know why I write these private blogs. 

When I broke up with my first girlfriend a long time ago, I happened to stumble across a web-article suggesting that I write a “hypothetical” letter to her. The letter would express all of the thoughts and emotions that I was feeling in that moment in raw, gorish detail. I was then ordered to read the letter, analyze it, then destroy it. Back then, I thought that the purpose of the exercise was to expose all of my feelings into a safe environment without judgement. I guess it did work in that way, but now I see that the exercise was probably supposed to serve a greater purpose; a purpose that I was too proud to see, and instead, used as an outlet for pre-medititative poetry. The true purpose of the exercise was to reach my hand into the liquidy darkness of my heart and analyze the small pool that I was able to cup into my hands. Only within this small gathering of truth can I begin to understand who I am, what damage am I may be doing, and to take the appropriate measures to stop it before it is too late.

Maybe these blog posts are a subconscious attempt to do just that; however, every time I try to let loose the demons of my mind, they instead crawl lazily up my arms and puppeteer a fools play that ends up with a cheap ending that everything is going to be okay.

I watched the movie Enemy tonight, where Jake Gyllenhal’s character is doomed to play out the patterns of the tragic impulses his subconscious creates. I long to break the emotional bondages I have been tied onto. My greatest fear is that I am doomed to remain within the jail cell of my astrological sign or a personality type. I want to be aggressively honest with myself; shoot myself in the head with a loaded shotgun of truth and see what remains. 

So lets try this again:

I am afraid of being alone. I am afraid of losing my family. These realities reverberate through my being. Although I do not think about them head on, I deal with their symptoms on a regular basis. Fear of change, fear of meeting new people, fear of failure. I think if I let my subconscious do as it wanted, it would crawl back into the womb of my mother and live in a lazy, ignorant bliss.

So where then is strength born? Does everyone feel this way, they just make decisions against their instincts on a daily basis? Does it become a habit to disobey the primal longings of going back home, not because its frowned upon, but because home is an idea that is constantly growing more and more extinct?

Home is an endling.

I think her and I are done. I think whatever part of me she is holding onto is just to pass the time while she finds someone else. It’s how I treated Amy when we weren’t together. She doesn’t trust me to be the man she wants, and it’s simply because I’m not the man she wants. I don’t think she really ever really loved me that deeply. I was a fun distraction who catered to her basic needs. She probably lived on the notion that because I tended to some of these needs that she was supposed to love me. The most important need that I couldn’t tend to was her heart though. Her heart was a twisted one with bends and cracks that I couldn’t reach my hands through. 

Every time I see her in person, I scrape off the scab that’s healing over the tear in my heart. The scar still has healed some despite the scratching, but I’m certainly not helping things by repeatedly picking at it. Maybe its just a fools hope that things will change, maybe I’m just a coward who’s too afraid to give her up completely. Sometimes, I think we conjure up ghosts of the people we love so that we won’t be alone or have to face true reality of them. A stunt double we use for the dangerous parts so that we can play our roles more safely. 

“We’re lost Tommy, we’ll never make it back”

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Peter Pan

“Do you ever feel lost?”

She mumbled into my arm. She was laying into me like a child that had just awaken from a nightmare and ran into her fathers room for safety. Her eyes were shut and her speech was slurred; evidence that the mystery of “sleep” was upon her. For all I knew, she could have been asleep already and was just having a dream.

I told her “I think everybody does, some just hide it better than others.”

She took in my answer quietly; digging her half naked petite figure into me as far as it would go. 

I asked her “do you feel lost?” 

“Yes”

Of course she did. She had been born in a foreign Country and was left there by her parents as they ventured to America to pursue a better place. It was only halfway through her life that her parents extended the invitation to her. I’m sure by that time the damage had been done. It must have felt like moving into some strange biological foster home when she finally did make it over. At that age, I had moved from the state of Maryland to New Jersey. The move, which was only 2 or 3 states apart, was still enough awaken feelings of being an outcast or someone who did not belong. All alongside a loving family and without any sort of language barrier.

Still, the timing of her question was eerie. I had never felt more lost in my life. Failure at a job, loss of a girlfriend, friends who were gone and married, and parents who look a little more tired each day. I was tired too, waking up after lucid dreams of my past lover enjoying the company of other men. There was this apathetic joy on her face in these dreams that seemed to be especially designed to destroy me.

Why did I care? It was bound to be. Even if life is as chaotic as the modern philosophers seem to believe, the people that spark from it do so in predictable patterns based on the trajectory of their origins. Sometimes one person’s path will bump into another’s for a brief moment, before being separating back toward the dark void below.

What an empty thought, one worthy of overthrowing the survival instincts I live by to end it all. Still, theres always a faint glow of hope that I can see; despite the thick blankets of doubt that forever cloud my mind. 

An everlasting light that seems to be glowing further and further away.

[residualsociety-blog-blog]

Forest Fire

Here’s something interesting about forest fires:

If you don’t let forest fires burn, branches will die, fall, and collect on the forest floor. Therefore, the amount of flammable material within the forest is bound to increase over time. This isn’t a problem if the amount of deadwood is only of a moderate size, since if it does burn it will only burn for a short period of time. If the deadwood accumulates and is prohibited to burn; however, when it finally ignites the fire will grow so large and hot that it will burn everything around it to the ground.

In short:

A little bit of fire at the right time can stop everything from burning to the ground.

________________________________________________________________

After 3 months of training, I resigned from my job at the Camden County Dispatch Center. I forget what did me in: whether it was the exhaustion I felt of not being able to do the job or the fear that if I didn’t resign it would hurt my civil service status. All I know is that on the drive home from my resignation, I felt both frustrated and relieved. This had been the first job I had lost because of my inability to be able to do it. Immediately the thoughts involuntarily flooded my head: “how did this happen? what will my friends, lovers, and family think? how will I tell those who made this opportunity possible?"

“Was there more that I could have done?”

Thankfully, my initial answer to this question “there must have been” changed after a few days of reflection. The truth is, even if I was able to do the job perfectly, it would have done irreparable damage. I drank coffee to keep up with the 12 hours of calls that would come in every 5 minutes. On the days I had off, if I didn’t match this amount of caffeine intake, I found myself in a lethargic state. In order to compensate for my already impaired hearing, I would need to blast my head set in order to hear some of the callers appropriately. I can still hear the tinnitus clogging up my right ear (the ear I had the ear set on last) as if it were full of liquid noise.

Writing these thoughts out makes them sound like excuses; but the truth is that by keeping this job, I would have been trading everything in order to get the extra $150 a week. Not...worth...it.

Its funny, and sad, that one of the first thoughts I had when I made the decision to resign was “there’s no way she’ll come back to me after this”. An alarmingly foolish thing to think of, as well as proof that even her ghost still dictates my soul. I should know better by now, but my mothers heart and fathers mind that live inside of me will always battle one another until they both are put to rest.

How can I put this war to rest though? What form of diplomacy will allow for both my head and heart to start an alliance against the forces of love and life that constantly threaten it?

Perhaps by uprooting the spies of the enemy that lurk within and whisper fallacies between both forces.

These spies take many forms and are hidden in plain site. They are distractions such as video games, social media, television. They come as lonely friends and lovers who text you when they want attention (and not particularly you.) They come as people who mirror their idealizations onto you and assume that because you don’t follow suit, you’re a wolf among the sheep.

The spies subtly push their weapons into you through their jacket pockets in order to keep you hostage. 

Perhaps its time for more radical measures. To seek and destroy these spies (the ones that we know of) so that the country of our souls may be less compromised. How else can we fight the never-ending war of existence? How else will can we be useful to our comrades when we are tangled up within ourselves?

I’m tired of talking about getting better, I’m tired of feeling unworthy to those who are not worthy, I’m tired of being locked within the walls of dead branches that I have taken safety in for so long.

Maybe its time to start a fire, before its too late.