wanderlust-writings

[wanderlust-writings]

Well here we are again. Another day has past and the comforting blankness of the evening has once again fallen.

I'm trying to write as much as I can. I know you think that should be incredibly easy but I'm here to inform you that couldn't be farther from the case. Now there are some circumstance that are unique to me such as having a, at times, debilitating chronic illness, an autistic brother who requires my attention at times, the increasingly annoying fact that I still live with my family which can lead to numerous distractions--just to name a few.

Beyond that this world is so busy. I feel like I'm on one of those spinning carnival rides where the g-force increases and you are pushed up against the way. It just keeps getting faster and faster and though I try to push through the gargantuous invisible forces that are pressing down on me, I tend to find myself just thrown into another wall.

I'm not going to lie. I'm not the most disciplined. I get distracted by shiny objects and luminous screens. They draw me in with their effervescent allure, hypnotizing me into a trance-like state. Everything just seems more grand in screens. Pulling me out of myself and into the shoes of the fantastical, the glamourous. It's easer to consume than to create. Less energy and less chance of failure. A roundabout way of being a part of something without ever having to apply oneself. The safety wife to life trapeze act, allowing oneself to get lost in the sea of screens. To turn off our brains completely and simply float while someone else holds us up.

Sometimes I like easy. Other days I need it, but I don't want to become reliant upon easy.

No, my raison d'être is too glorious for easy.

Maybe that's sinful to say. That I rise above all the others. To even begin to think that my life has some sort of grandiose purpose. That my life matters more than the person down the street. Truthfully I don't believe that's true at all. Believing that I'm extra-ordinary is the greatest lie that I tell because I have to. If not, that means all this suffering that I have experienced will have been in vain. Ending up some rotten corpse in the ground, some etching carved onto a stone in a language that could one day be forgotten.

What's the point? Doesn't this all have to matter? To mean something?

My greatest fear is that it doesn't. That we are all just blindly groping our way through some maze trying to latch onto some inkling of meaning so we don't gauge our eyes out in the break room. So will find a person to copulate with and continue the species, a task that's been scorched into our DNA. We lie so we have some reason to wake up in the morning and contort ourselves into being another cog in the man's machine. We will do this over and over for our entire lives until one day we are withered, our bones brittle, or eyes cloudy, and our souls mute. All this bullshit--there has to be a reason? Right?

You wanted to know the sickest part? It's not that I'm trying to forge some philosophical meaning with these words. It's that I know how shitty my attempt is and yet I still do it anyway. The definition of insanity. It's that somewhere deep inside me I know that I'm worthless no better than a rat stuck in some maze intended to amuse others greater than me.

I'll keep trying. Set up a routine. Dispel all the garbage out of my soul and onto the page in hopes of discovering my golden chalice that will attract hordes or people, of their praise. Keep force-feeding myself this plastic lie until I'm knelt, face buried in the toilet, purging. Unable to continue to live this facade anymore!

until that day comes

x

[wanderlust-writings]

Into the Ether

Here I am, again screaming into another digital ether, hoping and praying that someone will see me.

It’s odd I suppose this continual sense of longing. I don’t know if it will ever be satiated. Perhaps this is the malady that is etched into my DNA; a predestined curse that I will never be able to be fully free from. It will always linger, dormant at times but always festering waiting, feeding.

People tell me to stop, to simply ignore it or force it into submission. But how can I change something that is so intrinsically a part of me? These are the questions that I want to scream in their face when they tell me to smile more or simply turn off the roaring thoughts in my brain. The only cure that I’ve thought about consists of carving open my skull and scooping out my brain like cantaloupe. Finally my mind would be an empty basin of silence that I could reside in, bathe in peacefully, maybe even potentially thrive in.

I think the worst part is having the things that comfort my soul be turned against me. I wonder if it has always been like that or is this new phenomenon of self-comparison and hatred an unseen side-effect of social media.

It’s all just so loud.

Voices are being poured into me constantly until I’m choking and gasping for air. I question how can my voice even be heard amounts all the traffic. Even if I were to scream, it would only sound as loud as a penny being dropped on the sidewalk—unnoticed. Their voices rip into my heart like sharpened talons tearing into my self-worth and confidence. That lingering presence stirs at the scratch of these talons. It knows it’s about to be fed, that the dinner bell has been rung. I try to beat it into submission to tell it the sound was merely a drop of water in a bucket nothing worth stirring for but it doesn’t believe me. Soon it has me tied up, laying belly-up on a placemat, wet saliva dripping onto my belly, rabid for the feast that is about to take place.

You’re not enough. How dare you call yourself an artist, let alone a writer? You’ll never amount to anything. You’re nothing.

I don’t want to listen. I don’t mean to inflame it any further but I can’t help but throw more wood on the burning flame. It’s hard to believe these soft, light, hopeful dreams when the evidence points to the contrary. How many followers? How many likes? Views? Reposts? Push harder and harder, scream louder and louder until your vocal cords are shredded and torn and you’re once again silenced.

Is it a fatal flaw of mine? This longing for glory? This need to self-mutate my dreams until they are nothing more than a scrap of garage buried underneath the unfulfilled dreams of the millions? Is it my pride that is secretly my poison? The double edged sword that I can’t use without slicing some part of me open as well, will I ever learn to wield it? Or will this dragon that dwells within me hoard that information until I’m withered and grey and unable to lift it anymore? Am I the problem? I must be. This mutation within my DNA is as much a part of me as it is a foreign adversary. Will we ever be able to exist in harmony or forever be caught in this war of dissonance?

I don’t have answers for these questions that haunt me at the wee hours of the morning?

So I’ll continue to shout, cry, purge, unburden, and fight into this dark ether until I stumble out into the light again.