Reflection

I looked in the mirror today.

I realized that the person staring right at me was the closest to who I want to be. I never was one to admire my reflection. In fact, anyone who have gotten to know me and is still around could tell you that I have a hatred for the person in that reflection. How I never make eye contact and simply ignore them and do what needs to be done so that I can spend the least amount of time with them. I've even gotten in to points where I avoid the mirror completely choosing to shave in the shower by feel when I need to or to allow my hair to grow as long as I can tolerate it until out of an outside need it has to be cut. I've brushed my teeth while walking away and used shiny surfaces of knives to see anything tha must be seen on my face.

I can not recount when my self hatred begun or that if it is a self hatred and not a strong case of guilt or shame handed down to me from those who predicted with some fervor that my existence would only bring woe and despair. All I can tell you is that I honestly would avoid looking at myself at any point and could not apologize enough that there is not socially approved way of hiding much of my face from public out side of locking a door. And yet, I looked into the mirror.

Through years of self reflection and understanding of my past actions, present thoughts and what can be collectively be call ed my dreams, I've come to realize that while there are those who thrive in the decidable of their own image and much of what it holds for them and for others I've have a strong sense of my own personal worth being less than most. Perhaps growing up surrounded by those who have devalued my worth in order to gain some control or seeing how some with narcissistic delusion have disgusted me in not caring in my appearance has caused me in seeing myself as ugly. Perhaps it's has been early years of pudginess and later years of a sickly constitution that has warped my view of my own potential to attract others. Perhaps I still see myself as an Outcast among everyone who in truth simply asks to be near the fringe instead of center. Perhaps it was in that self stated ugliness that I learned the nature of people.

Perhaps I've learned early in life that even though in my flaws, that I had some worth and talent that would set me aside from others and did seek to cultivate them. That my pursuit of language and meaning had given me lofty ambitions in standing in the lime light, not as Hamlet, but perhaps as Richard the 3rd. Perhaps I understood the nature of cruelty and kindness in a brief glance of eye and understood what an Old Man have taught me that I must always use my illusion to understand the hidden. Sadly, any dream of standing out and feeding my anorexic ego has died years ago with the snapping of dreams and goals by those who "knew what is best".

I still question their motives.

Perhaps my physical extremes have allowed me to see my true worth and potential. Not saying that I'm a stranger of the flesh. I've had my intimate moments where heavy breathing spoke louder than words and holding another in a safe sanctuary from the rest of the world. Even so, I've learned that my physical appearance was no factor to my mystic. It has always been my potential, what I have to offer, and what people saw me in being. While I've humored many in exchanged for a pheromone rush, I could never understand what they see in me. I simply taken every moment despite of the outcome as a saved memory for the cold days to come.

In my time, I've realized my potential not being ingrained in humanity, but as an act of nature. I realized that my role to many has been an entropic factor that simply sets certain actions in motion and nothing other. I've committed many acts of cruelty with my own hands as I've paid penance in hope of redemption. I've set rights to wrongs and taken lessons to heart. I understood that I'm simply a supporting force to many and in to my own rights not an individual. I've sworn fidelity to dying causes and sworn vengeance to those who could not reach for their own justice. I've understood the value of a well placed word and have even taken hell for an individual who in the end has written me off as an expense.

To say that I care what this shell resembles is mockery of what I stand for. Flesh can heal. It's a price for what matters and pain is often a path to purification. For creatures who are finite, on may find need in preserving this mortal coil while many who have searched for great calling have agreed that flesh is only an offering. It's a method of allowing a direct role in action while we have breath. It's a moment in which we can seek the true meaning of immortality, not in selfishly continuing to live, but in a chance of making true change.

Everything has it's price. You just have to know it's value.

What am I trying to say? What am I ever trying to say?

I looked into the mirror. I expecting a scowling look from someone who made others run and scream. I expected to see someone who has cause harm to others. I was ready to see someone who has spent most of his life righting wrongs and mending bridges crossed. I expected to see cold, judging eyes disapproving.

I found none of that.

I saw something else.

I saw a tired man instead of a careless boy. I've seen traces of hard earned gray and deep worry lines. A broken nose and scared face. Short hair that exposed kind eyes full of woe, battle worn experience, and a trace of hope. the person did not scowl or judge, but understood and could forgive. A small trace of a smile on a face not used to smiling, which gave it a greater value. Someone who has kept a promise, his word, and have shown many to stand not out of an inflated idea of greatness, but for those who could not. A face of stone sin cera.

I like him. I think I like him alot.

I could not help smiling back at him as he smiled at me. It's what I always wanted. Understanding. Someone who knew what is at risk and still knew that I pursued the greater good. Someone who I've always wanted to be.

As long as it has taken to get there, it's worth it.

Detoxing and Selfish Humanity

I think I was 12 when I learned how to Lucid dream. My father always loved books and would raid old dusty bookstores for old college texts that were all words and not pictures. Time to time he would have me read a book and then tell him what it meant or what I got from it. So at the young age I knew about Roman orgies and the true meaning of Easter. I also followed the experiments of 14th century monks who attempted to move a cork floating on water with their minds. I also learned that I can not have nightmares.

Where am I going with this? Give me my due and I'll tell you. In fact I've been waiting for the right way to approach this.

Reading as many dram books as I did, it was hard not siding with Jung rather than Freud. Well, that and I still would not have my first sexual experience until four years later. Yet, I understood the meaning of man's symbols. What they mean to us and why we subliminally choose one over another. It's not difficult. In fact the true difficulty is understanding the meaning of an object that you hold.

Lucid dreaming is understanding how you are dreaming and taking control of the situation. I learned this at an age when nightmares would shake me awake and not let go until the dawn arrived. My goal was to control my dreams so that I would at least be able to leave a dream that I did not want to have. So ever since the age of 12 I've had the ability to skip past the nightmares, awake and give myself enough time to go back to sleep and start again.

I've never knew that I would be causing my own troubles.

It would be years until I would understand that our subconscious sometimes talk through us through our dreams. With life today's it's difficult not picking up the so much crap around us including TV ads and the such. There is a battle for our minds that we walk through daily. It's what our environment is silently screaming at us and what we see and hear. It's what is mentioned with a laugh or what is between the lines. We carry so much from what we see that we don't often have the ability to hear our inner mind.

We often hear our inner minds when we escape our form of society. Most of the time it's a calm walk through serene landscapes or inside of a cab without a radio with at least and hour's worth of time driving. Our inner thoughts begin to creep back in and begin to speak to us. They tell us what we felt at a moment and what we think. They begin to argue and to yell if we ignore or run from them. They scream at us when it knows what we truly need and what do not.

It's taken me so long to understand my insomnia. It's kind of a mixed bag of many things, but to serve a condensed version, I sometimes do not want to hear what my mind has to say. I've silenced it with alcohol and pain killers, but it can only be silenced for so long. After a while it stops trying to warn you and lets you tear yourself apart. After a while you wonder why you have an ulcer or can not digest your food without loosing some of it. Or in my case why you lose all appetite.

December was difficult. It's always been and it does give me difficulty in understanding my place in the world and what I mean to it. having one of your mentors kill themselves will. having them kill themselves and not be near to prevent it can cause a man to drink his cups of gin. And yet, as I would stare into the dawn I realized I would not live too long like this. I understood that if I continue living like a zombie that I would never see another December.

"It's 4 o'clock in the morning, damn it."

We never like facing our fears. We never like facing them without any help or aid. And yet we have to make the choice of either running or standing still while we build up enough strength to take those important steps forward. Where else can we feel the most frightened and all of 12 then in our waking moments when we are still running and yet thankful that what chased us did not cross the either as we lay in our beds and hope that it did not creep in.

Who does not know that terror?

Ok, I think I have cracked this open. Now it's time to expose what I'm dealing with.

I decided on one of those early December mornings that I would not live this way anymore. I had to face those nightmares and see what chases me. I understood detoxing would be difficult and that I would have moments of hell and would even stumble along the way. I knew that if I was going to go clean I had to reach for something better than myself. I had to find my sanctuary in something meaningful and important. I won't mention what but if I did tell you, you'd have m committed.

Let's just say that God and I are not on speaking terms at the moment.

Through the past 5 months, I've been working with nightmares and fear. I've been working with others who have not idea how much healthier they are compared to me. I've had my moments when I had to sit in a public place or I would not see morning. I had to rally causes and ideals which so many hold dear and yet they have no hold on me anymore. To say that I'm fighting for my life would be dramatic. To say that I'm trying to save my concept of sanity would bring only uneasy laughter and a topic change. To say that I'm trying to prove what is and what is not would be best if I only admit that I'm on the what is not side.

To question one's own importance and meaning is a slippery slope. I've gotten a grip on the meaning of the universe and the secret of life, all the while attempting to negate it in hope of it remaining negated. Staring into oblivion with an option of not knowing what is next would bother most yet I feel well at home.

And yet, throughout all of this I've exposed and broken the last of the family taboos on a past that condemned all of us. I've helped children understand that the hell they lived came from someone not worthy of defecating on their grave. I've reached the most stubborn and angry of people to have them understand the meaning of it all and how survival comes at a price and how the dead have it easy. I've exposed how I've spent the past eight years studying and reaching for that x-factor until I had to literally dig up the dead to understand what caused it all.

At the same time I took a chance and played the fool and tried to give someone what they wanted the most only to discover they did not know what they want and hated me for trying. I still love them, but I can not reach them. My words hold no meaning and palaver hold no meaning. Perhaps time would reveal itself and bring peace to the situation or perhaps I will only cut my ties once more and pray that they find a peace that I can never offer.

"When are you gonna come down
When are you going to land
I should have stayed on the farm
I should have listened to my old man"

I've brought brothers together and taken blows from either side. I've had to subdue anger and do the last thing that I am never able to do with the hope that I will survive a betrayal. Everyone wants trust and understanding, yet we horde it to ourselves and we keep others at bay with threats that we secretly resent. What we usually want the most we ultimately end up killing. helping someone see that is nearly close to impossible yet it is more convincing after you've taken the slings and arrows and have not raised your fist in anger no matter how much you want them to bleed.

Trust is earned on the blood and merit of those willing to bleed and suffer. Sadly, we end up killing them and praising them as demigods rather than following the example.

"Look at the people in the streets, everywhere they don't seem like they care
And everyone is getting mad, it just seems like we've all lost the plot"

So through it all I've been trying to take control of what I've running away from . I do not see a future and many times think that I will not make it. It's hard facing your fears and nightmares in understanding where you stand and what you need the most.

It's a lot to be able to leave the house. I have to gather what little strength I have left from the past month. I've pushed though so much and I helped alot, but I'm finally down to the point and where I have to make my point clear.

I'm tired of being used. I'm tired of being taken advantage. I'm tired of being tossed aside afterward only to have people return to me and treat me as a pocket guru or safety blanket. I'm important in the range that I'm not a friend or love one. A human eraser who looses pieces of himself after each use. Someone who is only needed for answers and is treated like a $2 whore. I understand that most people do not know what they do or that they seem to think that I'm able to take punishment. It does not matter.

"You've come to love me nightly
Yeah you've come to hold me tight
Is this motion everlasting
Or do shutters pass in the night?"

What is the difference if I was drunk and plowed into people and killed them and if I had a heart attack and did the same? Less guilt? People would also feel bad for me? I'd be forgiven or that I will have something to hide and cover my shame with? We hide in our pain and use it as a shield to keep progress and life away. We use pain and past to scream louder than the other than to realize we are all in pain and it's foolish to compare it. Even those who see it do it. Everyone does it and I'll include myself since I have to "unthink" my thoughts and actions in order to do what is right not what benefits me.

You honestly make me sick. I'm not insulting you, you actually make me sick. Dealing with your pain makes you selfish and self centered. You do not understand how if you just make one fucking attempt to reach out to another person regardless of what you "feel" you can heal yourself and others? Instead I'm used as a pain killer and disposed when my effects wear off from abuse. You are all killing me. When did I place myself over any of you and say that I would be your leader? Listen to me as I tell you once more, I'm sick too and I hurt too and I have to fight daily to get enough strength to get out of bed and just eat something. The only thing keeping me alive is a flimsy principle believing that things will get better. If I'm strong I'm strong because I'm being strong for you. Not me.

I would have checked out a long time ago with Avey.

Like I said before, the dead have it easy. Survivors have to work hard to make it another day. Survivors have to do what they can to change their lives to live. I'm doing this in hopes of knowing there is an out besides dying. If not, then I realized Avey was right and I'm going out with him.

"What the hell we fighting for?
Just surrender and it won't hurt at all"

And so, I'm trying to get my energy up to go to class today. I'm trying to gather enough strength to stand in the shower and was myself. I'm trying to get back into my regiment of taking care of me and pushing on. At this point, I'm more doing it out of obligation rather than desire. People have no idea how they take so much energy from me without giving a bit of it back.

Can things be easier? Sure, but I have to start drinking again and popping pills to make things right. That's not what I want. I want not to hurt anymore. I want to actually to smile our of joy than social norm. I'm doing this because it's my greatest fear and the last elephant in the room for me. I have to stare into it's eyes because I know I'm afraid of it and it will take me regardless if I want it or not. I have to stare it down and hope it blinks before I do. If it does I know I can pull out of this.

So what am I saying? I don't need you if you can not love me. I'm not asking for sex or closeness, but an actual kindness of human compassion. Tennessee Williams said that, "Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person", yet that's only half of the coin. You must get that back. We can not generate energy to feed others without it costing us. We need that sincere kindness back. If not we wither and die. Speaking as someone who has held his share of trembling human being and taken his share of Hell for others we need to overlook that selfish need to horde and start giving back what we want the most.

I'm not making a plea for help or saying that people should stop what we are doing and roll in the mud. I think the Hippy movement showed us that this is a load of bull. I'm saying that before you yell at that other person in anger or pain to take a second and contemplate their actions rather than condemn them. Maybe there is nothing behind it, but at least you'd be able to see their motives and defend yourself a bit more than to react. If we simply act rather than react to someone else we can make things better.

What ever. You won't You are all too ingrained in your own hell and concept of what is right. Another reason why I'm a dying breed. Do what you will, but just wonder what you last days will be like and how many have you wronged over stupid situations when all you wanted to say is "I love you and I'm sorry for hurting you".

Whatever.

Like I said before, saving the humanity is pointless. I never wanted to save the world. I wanted to save myself. In the end, that's all I have and that's all I will still have. I'm tired of false hope and empty words. I've put myself in enough compromises and acts of peace to know that humanity is selfish and there is not much distance in evolution between our reptilian selves and us. The facade of being holy, righteous or destined is a load of crap and you can make yourself happy in your own heads if you like. I just arrived at the point where I started from oh so long ago. People are not worth it. Person maybe, but people, never.

So in the end, I have to cut ties and distance myself again. I've made enough peace and love for others to benefit while my own bowl goes empty. Last time I checked, I never wanted to be a martyr or messiah. I wanted a bit of earth to make me happy with someone who will make me happy as much as I will make them. Her name is going to be Rachel and she's going to be a German Shepard. Position filled. Anyone else will have to make a fucken' effort with me. I'm not playing doctor or shrink with any of you selfish asses. Some of you hate being called a selfish lover? I'm calling you selfish human beings.

Sit and spin.

I have try to get to class today.

Soporific Longings

I swear I woke up to someone whispering in my ear, waking to an empty room. Could not make out what was said, but it felt someone was calling for me. There is some comfort in cold logic. It gives me an excuse to remain impartial and fair to others instead of telling them what I want the most. It's easier to betray my own longings, becoming someone's champion than to rally my own cause. I always seem to want what I can not have the moment I can not have it. There IS safety in my calculated risks.

Forgive me for being cryptic. Words have always held a certain power for me, as they allow me to say what I yearn to scream, yet allow me to remain hidden often times to what I wish to say. Perhaps this is a form of cowardice, as I use innuendo and allegory to hide my motive in the shuffle of words. Forgive me for doing so. The closer I come to inner feeling the more I would rather just remain silent and say nothing. I'm not surprised that my writing this is just a way of closeted catholic need to confess what I would most rather not say.

This has been a month of reflection. I've can not help to be revisited by phantoms of my past as I try to use cold logic to understand my actions in hope of finding solace in pattern and science. As learn much as I shared with a protegee, that I know my nature and in truth its very much like keeping a beast in chains. There have been moments when I lived in whim and made actions that allowed me to live for today for the joy of living. Yet as it usually takes me longer to heal when everything would go wrong. Having my heart on my sleeve usually leave me heartbroken.

It's safer to remain coy anyways, although I learned that I often have to think my way out of mischievous, Puckish behavior. I learned long ago to think seven ways past my initial reaction. As much as there was fun to be had, I could not often bare with the disappointment of error. Learning of the Method, and enveloping myself in logic and tactic has allowed me to use reason as my protection. It gives me leeway to do what needs to be done rather than what I want more.

Yet I have to admit there are moments that I wain from this protection. Usually I do need to let the beast out and allow it to roam under certain, guarded parameters. My risk is often calculated as I become the temptation of those who can not reach. I enjoy allowing myself the ability to become carnal knowing my sense of honor will simply keep me at safe distance. It's not mystery why I choose to surround myself with unattainable fruit than to sit with those I can become a glutton with. Some sins are always forgivable in a nuzzle and a loaded word then it is in an act of passion.

As much as I enjoy regaining my humanity, I long learned that I can not afford to revel in the such. In truth, I've lost many who still make my heart ache and left those who I wanted nothing more than to hold close and profess my adoration for. There is times like this that I feel for lack of value over the lack of nerve that I am never good enough for anyone. I relive the pattern in my head as it loops madly in me. If I can understand when one's heart turns from brilliant love to temptation, I can understand why I end up losing. The pattern haunts me still and I sometimes understand why it's best leaving someone wanting more, with sweetness on their tongue than to have them walk away with bitterness on it instead.

And yet, what haunts me is that once I get my life together. After retrieving all the fallen pieces and stumbling forward once again, they usually return. They come back. They come back and want me to take them back into my life as if they simply just never left. I can forgive many trespasses. I always tell those near me to never apologize and never thank me. If they understood my nature, they would know that I give of myself not to be thanked, but for a desire to give. I ask for no reparation, since it's all a part from loving someone. Yet, understanding human nature I soon learned that people want me to love them unconditionally rather than romantically.

It kind of breaks your heart, doesn't it?

In truth, I only have sisters and lovers when it comes to those who cross a threshold with me. Once someone becomes valuable in my eyes, I have to place them in one category or the other. If you are my sister, I will love you unconditionally. I will share your woes and fears and will stand against the world in your defense. Yet to do so, I set up a distance that will never be crossed. I will set up a boundary where in truth I can not change. Once someone is considered "blood" I can not hold incestuous thought. Although rare, there have been those who wanted to cross this and it always left me with a taboo feel, regardless of how tempting I become.

Those who become lovers I usually end up living for in the end. I find it hard not to in retrospect. My behavior even curbs towards their benefit as some unconscious element in my mind makes me take on characteristics that I usually do not naturally call my own. I know this because once someone leaves it takes me so long to rediscover myself once more, almost as if I had been comatose for the duration. It's almost like being soporific, as it calms my soul and makes me feel whole at times. As blissful as it is, I see now that it is not me and sometimes I simply see it as not worth the slumber.

I say this because there is some error in the logic when usually they become distant and sooner or later they leave. Often times I've given the reason of complications of life or another only to find out some time later that they just found someone else. The grass is always greener, no? I still do not understand though what would make them think that I would want them back in my life or that after they spend their time with their other choice that I would want them to return to me "enlightened" to how magnificent I am and how they missed me.

I don't mind that they leave, that I can forgive. Them coming back? Never. It's not like I never told them this or that they understand that some things I can never forgive. The list is so small it's relatively tiny. Perhaps it's the temptation of the forbidden tree knowing that I can not forgive this injury. I do not understand it, no matter how much I ponder it.

....

Perhaps it's why I've been distant in the past few years. It's easier for me to keep some distance between myself and another than to lace them into categories anymore. The concept of humanity often leads me to reflect too long. I get lost in my head time after time only wrestling with the why's than the how's. It's almost as if humanity is a walking paradox that does not offer any solution no matter how much I want there to be one. Perhaps if there is one I would not be here awake writing this, with apprehension that it's even being read.

Then again, confessionals are usually dark places where voyeuristic tendencies are usually the norm.

...

Oddly enough I feel better and I feel sleep return. Perhaps this thought will remain unfinished as it is in my head. There is no ending to this since I do not see one in sight. As much as it hurt me to say, I do not see myself finding peace with this. I do not see myself in that opiate dream once more. Perhaps it's best for me to remain awake and longing for resolution than to induce blissful sleep and tranquility of another's embrace.

....meh.