Intermission

    It hasn't been more that a half and hour since I've woken up, turned water on and shook my mouse awake. Sundays are usually my days to study since there isn't anyone home and I can completely focus my time on studying, taking a well deserved nap and whatever needs my attention in a lazy manner. It seems that since I've thrown myself into my school work that I've busier that imagined. I've made huge strides despite smaller class sizes, the University trying to get rid of me, and getting a patron to offer me the money to get this stupid degree done. Even though I've given up my social life to the wolves and usually spend a total of 12 to 14 hours a day studying just to keep up with the pack and ahead of the failing crowd.

Mind you, I'm not claiming to be intelligent in any way. I'm the last person to claim that I'm in any way intelligent. Stubborn, yes. Determined, sure. Too stupid to know when I'm beat, of course! I'm the first person to say that I'm not the brightest bulb in the bunch, but I'm more than willing to learn and make sure I never repeat mistakes then to pull a House moment and see the trees for the forest. And yet, just struggles in thought has actually gotten me in some awesome parties where I happy am aware that I'm the dumbest person in the room and I'm more than happy with that. Being the dumbest person in the room usually means I get to learn something new and nothing makes me happier. Better than being the smartest in the room.

And yet, this was my life a half an hour ago. See I'm being kidnapped in less than 20 minutes before they're here. Personal messages scream across my screen that notify me that my abductors are already on their way and have already crossed the threshold of "too late" and "be ready or well drag you out". My plans of making coffee and watching Bruce Campbell be Bruce Campbell have gone up in smoke as I sit there a bit confused and shock. I'm calculating the time of a shower and laundry and how quick I can come up with an excuse to hide under my rock more. Abductor A has already disarmed me with remarking that not only are they getting off the freeway and I am past my midterms and have nothing better to do. She disarms me of every chance of escape and has even baited enough cheese to make me think twice. Before I know it they're pounding on my door laughing and telling me to get out or they'll coming after me. Reluctantly I crack open the door and concede without the benefit of a white flag for them to snatch away and smack me with. I plead for a half hour to shower and to mimic human beings and to wait in the car. They give me 15 and counting.

Packs of women, what is it about packs of women? Oh, did I leave that part out? Yes, I'm being kidnapped by two women hell bent of making me do things. Yes, I'm that antisocial. Lookers? Of course they are. Fun to be with? Easily. Wanting me and I have the nerve to complain? Hardly. Hey, you making that 70's porn music with your mouth! Stop that. I'm telling the story here. If you are in that mood or impatient then go look at porn and stop reading. Did I mention you can get porn on the internet instead of reading this? Yea, I know. What ever you are into and what ever is going to give your nightmares. Ok, I'm digressing, but while I'm showering and trying to get my hair to behave I'll describe my rowdy abductors.

Abductor #1: She's a physical manifestation on why I stopped trusting blue haired girls even if her hair is a bright red. A bit of a long past that makes her more than interesting and fin to have around if not for the fact that she is living on the edge of civilization. A drive longer than sin, yet still worth visiting when my other friends are too busy with life to pay attention to me. You can almost call her the little voice in my ear that makes me want to let go the reins and raise a little hell. An awesome person to date that even her own ex's recommends her to others. More than my intellectual equal even though I think I know more. She has been a joy in my life and more than willing to climb through her window even when she's not home. Have a bit of a harem problem being the patron sexpot of all Nerdboys, but hey what are you going to do?

Abductor #2: If you wrap a wolverine in pink and dump adorableness with a pair of legs that would make you drool until you kicked by them is a good idea of who she is. Brilliant in her own ways and can almost keep up with my drinking and have actually made me car about basketball, if only for a season. A woman that would make Wonder woman proud, she can throw down as well as discuss complex mathematical concepts. She bounces with life and is more than willing to hold saloon or court. She also pulls on that hedonistic nerve in the way that a martini should be quality, food decedent, and fury at a close switch. She also pulls on the whole Nerdboy vibe, but she is completely oblivious to what they are and where they come from.

So why are they friends and not more? A topic too complicated to sum up in few words and too complex to phantom. Or not. In truth, it's me and never them. After some time I've come to realize that I have some sort of x factor that makes most of my relationships fail. As much as I would love to say that I just met a few psychopaths in my time or even that I'm some sort of magnet or even that I've made a few women unstable to the point of stalking me, leaving messages on my phone between insane and threatening, and even a few cases of assault against me. I'd like to think that I'm a victim of circumstance as Curly would declare, but after so many encounters I hate to say that my random outlier has to be the mutual breakup with the understanding that love has been shared and paths simply have to move on. In truth, I've become a bit Machiavellian in my relationships, going with heard earned rules and methods of dodging those bullets. In many ways it's easier keeping an awesome friend that will bring me years of joy even if they leave than to have a pist off ex to avoid.

Even if I not able to smell the flowers I'd rather sit among the beauty of a garden than to take a chance of killing off another flower.

It seems that my abductors are getting restless as why start honking and yelling for me. Yep, just what my reputation needs more, restless women demanding that I get in the car. We travel Westside in search for new territory of conquest as I offer my old stopping grounds as fresh slaughter. I could use caffeine, a nap and more caffeine, but why complain while I'm here or at least that's #1's logic in shutting my complaining ass up. We hit a Middle Eastern restaurant and dine as we talk and savor rich coffee as it's meant to be. We take moments to catch up and to laugh and share our time together.

We share our views and keep conversation light. One of my abductors is still recovering from heartbreak and we dance on eggshells enough to keep our thoughts proactive. If there is a connection to us all it would have to be that we all had out rough relationships and dealing with love yet, we have different methods of coping. Different mechanisms that help us get over the worse of it. Methods of emotional survival that gets us over the worse and make us some how functional.

And yet, I can't help to feel a bit more envious at times.

Our meal leads us to one of my old haunts when before the young and stupid ages before I discovered that the curves of the feminine appeal in vivo than on the pages of comics. We walk in as I'm taken back to a simpler time. #2 flows through the crowd as if she was a fish in water, searching through volumes of back issues and anthologies. #1 is busy remarking how odd the settings all the while letting everyone know that she does not belong here and that she is a stranger in strange land. I allow myself a moment to look at new and old. I've not collected in years when extra income was an annoyance rather than a fluke. Volumes speak back to me in memories and times of old. I retrace my steps back to when all I had was myself rather than to look after those near me.

There was a time when I didn't have a roll to play or responsibilities to others. Where my Saturdays were filed with me trying to take up the time rather than sit alone in dark rooms. Reading stories of heroes and villains alike. Wondering what life will have set for me and how I will take on the world. Reading of those who suffered losses and fought for vengeances, it's hard to wonder differently one could behave to face on the world. World takes something away from you, you take on the world. A simple view of the world for a world past being simple. It's difficult to understand who I was and what I was. How my view of love and life have changed into a world of gray rather than black and white. In two decades I will fall stupidly in love, marry, have children, divorce, and try to rebuild what life I never had all the while stumbling and falling into one oddity to another. I would play numerous roles, some by my own choosing and others given to me. I still question my past at times, even when I've continue to arrive at the same conclusions.

We make our exodus quickly as we laugh to ourselves. It seems #1 has raised the ire of the Nerd Boys rather than their lust this time and nerd rage is something to be avoided at all costs. We head west until we reach the beach as we find a parking under shade and walk on towards the beach. By this time I forget that I'm annoyed and denied a Sunday filled with slumbering. Soon my feet are immersed in sand and seawater fill happy lungs. My previous memories of this beach has been soured a bit as we walk on the sand. It's been years, but I usually try to rewrite memories in places dear to me in hopes of combating any bitter feeling. This beach has seen moments of joy and sadness. People with me and those far away. People who have chosen to leave my life and others promising to return. It's still a place of promise and hope for me so this had to be a place we chose.

Walking on the sand has offered me some insight and calm. Watching the sun slowly set to the ocean, it would be a few months when both my abductors would leave to go east. Their lives will take them to new places and new tasks as I remain here to struggle on a bit longer. I have a hunch others will leave and enter in time and not without a small moment of respite to pass the time for just a small while. And yet, I can not help feeling a bit hollowed inside, with some yearning that only T.S. Eliot could put to words. There is still much story to resolve and much to uncover and yet, I can not help thinking back to the sandy sunset wondering that this time is mine, even if tomorrow is taken from me. This moment in the warm sand and the salty breeze on my face is special. After all, tomorrow is never promised, but this moment is mine for the taking.

It almost gives me hope.

......but I was dead at the time.

Sorry, no post this week. Someone replaced my lungs for bagpipes and a mixture of drugs, coughing and fever induced delirium has kept me finishing anything by now. New post by next week.

Tapping the 4th wall, staring back at you.

This is the sixth time I've tried to put something here and each time I've erased it, thinking that I don't have the connection that I always look for. The flow that seems to make it all easy to block it all out of my mind and helps me to pull out what needs to come out. I have a few things in the works and I should pick up one of those pieces and try to get it done in a reasonable measure of time. And yet, I can't help feeling a little self conscious. Something that to this day never amazes me that I tend to feel. That excuse of antisocial retreat that allows me enter my protective spheres away from the reach of most. 

I guess it would explain my voyeuristic tendencies. Not in the disrobing nature or watching me do some sort of sexual act, but something that I would consider extremely personal. A moment to become someone else. Someone who does not have to pretend to know three steps ahead, never bleeds without laughing back at you, someone whose very skin is made of stone and hands of steel. To be that hero who rides into the sunset, who refuses the kiss with the maiden to uphold some ancient rite of nobility or simply put the cold, silent type that plays well as muscle. Sometimes it's good just being who I can not be. To confess not past sins, tribulations, nor humiliations, but to confess a simple humanity that would not be found in Hemingway, even in the end.

To be honest, not that I lie, but to be open and to not regard every thought with different potential of coming back to haunt me, that is what I mean. There are moments, places where I am completely unknown where I actually pick up different characteristics, different behaviors. Where I can blend enough in the room where I am not important and not known. It's harder to escape life in a physical manner and so my writing is my escape. It's where I can stop rallying for the cause and just be no one. Something that I do rarely with friends and more often with the company of strangers. I guess that would explain my secret spots whee I'm known as someone else, go by different names and even play a different role. We all become braver when we know that we can be someone else if only a moment. Nothing that I'm willing to relive in any way, but sometimes it good to flirt openly and stupidly with someone, not caring if I get their number. To become the joke rather than to make them. To sit in the gutter and have everyone completely ignore you or even go the extra effort to pity you. The moments that normal people can never afford out of some sort of shame. 

Hmmm....always figured it like going to a theme park. No matter how much you try to cram into the moment you are always going to miss out on something. Some moments you are going to miss out simply due to your gender. Others due to your physical appearance, no matter how you try to blend in. Those are moment that I still attempt to reach for. Sure you'd never imagine me singing a German Drinking song in a beer hall, remembering the Fatherland, but hell you either get laughed out or people buy it, so why not? So knowing that much, isn't it worth just trying to get that you can from your E ticket? 

Yeah, I showed a bit of age there.

And so, I'm here not reliving some moment where I don't understand or trying to piece the missing chunks from a memory and wonder why he/she/it did this/that/the other. Right now I'm looking past the fourth wall wondering who I'm mentally disrobing for. Staring into the darkness wondering who are the eyes staring into my little charade and wondering if there is any point. Numbers and stats tell me that I'm seen from different parts of the world, different times in the day, different programs or whatever and yet it can all be done by some chipmunk in Hoboken, even though I have no idea where Hoboken is and chances are I'll look it up to satisfy my bothersome mind. I'm wondering why you are reading this and what you are getting out of it. No matter what is written I only get stats, but nothing else. Perhaps it's the performer in me or the fact that I need some sort of validation from someone even if it's a weak clap and a sigh. I've gotten past this with time and see my random writings as my sad way of tossing a message in a bottle, a good chance that someone will read it, but no way of hearing anything back. Even if it's the simplest smiley face.

=-)

=-|

=-\

See, easy. Maybe it's because I write from a place that means alot to me and leaves me shaking afterwards as I reread and wonder if there is any point to writing it beside my peace of mind. And yet, I have read early pieces that have left me laughing and even annoyed. I'm far from being the most eloquent or charismatic, but I do know what to let off my chest even if it's a pile of crap that I will only respond afterwards with a disparaging word. I'm my own worst critic simply because I'm able to remove the sting from others bows with my own shot. I know, stupid, but I'm still trying to get things making sense. No way I'm winning a Pulitzer or becoming renown, so with that stress off my shoulders why not just grunt out my thoughts so I won't pull my head off from frustration. I mean, are you going to remember me for some brilliant thing? Nah. But will it be worth reading and get some thing out of it, maybe. Then again, I may just be being voyeuristic for that chipmunk. You know, the one earlier? Only way getting rid of "stage fright". Thinking of that chipmunk. 

I know, stupid.

But I can't help thinking that you're out there. That you are reading my words and that you have enough patience to read on in attempt to figure out what I'm getting at or if I'm ever getting to a point. I guess I just wanted to know that someone if out there looking in and is getting something from it I might even be inclined to reach back is there is a response or .....whatever. This is stupid. I'm just going to continue writing my bottle messages and keep tossing them into the ocean of nothingness. My form of a scapegoat that lets me go back and realize what the bloody hell is wrong with me and if there is any redeeming factor to me or am I just deluding myself without knowing. you can keep looking in and talking among yourselves, pointing every now and then with a laugh that I can not hear. No real names and masks on. Just shut up and get to it, monkey.

Fine. I tried, horribly but I'm going to count it an attempt cause that is an attempt in my book at the moment. Good night/morning/day or whatever. I'll let you go and I'm going finish up the remain of the bourbon I have in my desk. Best way to forget? Booze. Another reason why I have a bottle of Soju in there. Just in case I want to forget who I am and join you all. 

Ok. Later. 

The next post will return normally and filled with my confusing and random mutterings that keep me out of a straight jacket. Even the nice one I keep looking at. I could use new jacket.

Oh, I have a theory I want to play out. If people are trying to friend me from here just message me so. I'm trying to be.....social......I guess. Ok.....bye again. For real this time.

*pretends to leave and stares back at you*

*still watching you*

*watching and wondering if you think I'm stupid cause I know I think I'm stupid*

*No? Fine. Leaves in an embarrassed mess. Fuck it. People are overrated anyways*

*still looks out*

*fine. Leaves for real*

*forgot my keys. I keep forgetting things. sorry, bye for real this time*

*comes back and waves before leaving*

Love's Naloxone Or Taking the Anti-love pill. Part Seven – Rush : Act 2

    The pain was so intense that he had to stop walking, resting on his cane on the stairwell. At this pace, he'd not only be late, but he might just miss the session. Today was a work day and even though he said that he'd miss out on the lecture and make it up another day he could not cancel on them. It wasn't just because that canceling too an act of God and he had to find someone who had the time to replace him, which was impossible this quarter, but he only had three students this quarter and no one was willing to take his session for three people. Even though he started with eleven they got whiff that he was tough. He laughed at himself and let a pained laugh escape into the echo of the stairwell. It seemed that all he had to do was tell the instructor that the students were goofing on the net, uploading their profiles and looking at photos while she went over transitive properties. So just two more floors above him were three students who were still willing to come and see him. If it wasn't for his supervisor and friend, he would have just lost the group and told that there was nothing to do but be unemployed and wait for the next quarter. When you're not in a click, then you are not worth the trouble for others to lie for it seemed.

 
    "People depend on me", he kept saying to himself as every step up seems to radiate more pain throughout him. It wasn't any way to deal with it either. He couldn't block it out. He couldn't recognize it and work with it. He couldn't even switching it over and make it glorious, sweet and delicious. It just hurt and he's already taken a mixture of eight pills that four would have stoned him. His world has been enveloped in this pain for the past three days with each day increasing. He noticed it when he got up one day and felt it in his inner thigh. He couldn't see where it was, but felt a lump.

 
Lymph nodes? Could he be fighting an infection? What the hell could it be? It frightened him enough to clean out what he had left in his account to wait two hours in a clinic and expose himself to the doctor. The doctor spoke of not knowing what is or what was. It should not be too serious. The next day he returned and the lump increased and sitting brought him the kind of pain that shook his teeth. He mumbled again on diet and exercise and handed him a $60 prescription for blood thinners. Nothing to worry about, see him if it still does not improve. He figured that he'd see him after work now since he probably needed the cash at this point. He'll go see him afterwards. He promised who ever would listen. Just let him endure this. Let him endure this for two more hours. Let him get them ready for their test on Thursday and then he'll go home and get help. Just need to climb a few…..more….steps.

 

I didn't get to high
Kept my feet on the ground

 
    There is something about pain that just seem to make time drag its heels. It was a feeling that conveyed that you were alive with more proof that you'd ever need. The steps were reached and the classroom approached as he mustered all his will to just last a bit more. He could not lie to save his life, but perhaps make the situation less. He asked for forgiveness for his lateness as he walked in. He was not doing to well, but he'd be good enough to get to work. They worked for a total of 40 minutes which he could not believe that he lasted that long. His responses were slow and his speech slurred. Probably the pills not doing what they need to do. He stood and prayed a prayer of the most sincere. He took up praying in the early mornings and the late night. He prayed not for help, but for understanding. He didn't ask for understanding of what the situation was, but to be understood. He knew he wasn't who he was anymore. He wasn't what he thought he would be by now and he felt deep in his skin that he disappointed so many along the way. He was so weak and could not endure any more of it. Praying was the only thing that kept the thoughts away. The easy out. The quickest way his fight against the world to join so many who have fallen. And so he prayed constantly to be understood. He asked for forgiveness and to not be remembered as a failure as a human being. Another to fall along the line to be forgotten.

For the heartache and the pain
Got a cause throughout my years

    For a while now he'd been questioning and wondering what was wrong with him. He could not keep neutral anymore. He could not give a "half pound of flesh close to his heart" since there isn't anymore left. Throughout his life he has always protected others. Saved people from the worst of the world and held them until the lives stopped falling among their heads. He pulled people back up and sacrificed more than he'd ever admit to individuals who still to this day would thank him if their paths were crossed. He gave of himself as a penitent man would. He fought a good fight and stood up to those who would crush the humanity of others. Some people did well and he left their lives for the better. Others latched on and dragged him low until he had to for them to let go for survival.
    He couldn't remember how he done it, but he ran out the room. He told them to work on a problem and ran out. He rushed to the bathroom as cold fear gripped him. He shouldn't be running, that will only make things worse. He needs to stop. He needs to stop running or its only getting worse. The stall closed behind him and the heat burned him in the cold day. His mind was racing, less than a minute. He had less than a minute. His hands went to his leg and he had less than a minute. It took eight to circulate completely through his system. The same amount of time light from the sun reached earth. The same amount of time it took an egg to hard boil. To water boil. His pants was hot and the smell putrid. The pain, where did it go? Why did it stop suddenly? Why is he sitting on the floor? That's not hygienic and he's going to get a blood born infection if he stays sitting. What happened to the pain? It doesn't hurt. It doesn't hurt and he has less than a minute. He needs to count. He need to count the ways, oh god how easy is it do die? An artery only took less than a minute and the towels are already soaked and it smells and I'm going to die alone on the filthy bathroom floor and it's not even a minute yet. Why? Why? Why am I dying?

 

All the chances that are blown
And the times that I've been down

    His mind was cluttered and clear. The pain left only dread in a primal knowing that things were not as they should be. The clot that the doctor spoke of not being dreadfully too dreadful had burst the vein causing the backed up blood to spill. Blood that has not been cleaned or oxygenated pouring out his wound black. The bathroom floor began to pool near his leg as he simply watching his own hands move without any thought behind them. They worked to stop the bleeding as he understood that an artery can lose all its blood in less than a minute. Hands work with quickened grace and his mind transported elsewhere.
    His mind raced as if it had to finish a long shopping list of thoughts before it would begin to shut down. His thoughts ran to his children so far away that he could not believe he could ever live another day without them. They were the best part of his life taken away so far that he could not believe he would ever see them again. Two years away and he miss them so. They would tell them that their father died so stupidly on the filthy floor. He should have fought harder to keep them in his arms. The day they left in the summer the night rained heavy and long. She invited him to stay over. She reached him the way she always reached him and told him to sleep over. He didn't need to sleep alone and cry tears. He didn't argue with her even though she was ready. He picked up his bag from the door and went over. They sat together. It was more than he could want until they went to sleep in separate rooms. With the rain beating across the walls as much as he wished he could cry out.
    His friends. Damn it, they would not like this at all. They didn't have enough time. He was always a buck short and an hour late. So many things he couldn't do because of time and money. He wanted to finish it off and to pay them back. Friends were so hard for him to make after changing lives. Without a past, the future was bleak for a while and he embraced his solitude as an exchange. It was better that way. You can not leave without paying the cost. He some how gathered them in some form of mockery. He could not keep them together so he was given more to look after. Nothing like guilt and duty again. And yet, she always took time to feed me. Have tea with him. Share a happy moment when he didn't feel worthless or a burden. They shared moments of laughter as they fell into their arms cackling in the moments with so little at hand but a need of laughter and ….

And of all my friends
You've been the best to me
Soon will be that day
When I repay you handsomely.

    His eyes closed as he thought of her. He wanted to be near her once more. His actions before was to spare her and himself from that awkward relationship. It came to light that it was not only him who attempted to reach out to her, but also reached out. He worried of his closeness to her and that he could not be neutral for her sake. He always believed that every relation he took part ended badly and he made his choice to save those few and special relationships by not letting them continue. It was better to keep a friend than to make another angry ex disappointed in him for not giving them what they wanted, while not knowing themselves what they wanted from him. There was a point where he noticed he reached out towards her and she brushed him away. It always seemed that he was touching her and it bothered him. It bothered him to want anyone to the point that you needed their touch. That need bothered him and he hated that he could not be independent of her. In the end, he figured she would do better without him. He was not only a bother, but a burden to her. Or perhaps it was something else. They were arguing as a couple and the sad part was that he was the only one reaching out to her. They were not a couple. He would only make things stupid.
    Except he was not the only one reaching out. She reached out for him also. The most he pulled away from her the more she pulled him close. The closer he wanted to get the farther way she moved. How can someone tell you that they don't want you, that you are simply fiends while hands reach out for you? He would call this out. He would question her thinking on why she would cross that line from friends to something more only to blur the line into nothing. He could play a role, but that role would have to be defined. He felt cheap and used after a while and his close friend simply reminded him of others who needed him in one manner while denying him others. It crushed him. What the hell was it about him? Why would every relationship become this? Why was he only good enough sometimes? Now he couldn't have friends. He's was going to have to keep people at bay to prevent this. Can't lose people who would talk to him, what else would he have left? He can live as a leaper or as a human being, but not if he had to live both roles.
    And yet, he knew he loved her still. Loved her enough to want to see her again, once more.

How I'd love to be your man
Through the laughter and the tears

    "I don't remember what she looks like", he croaked. He savored the moment's irony and closed his eyes. He was going to die wanting to be with the woman he loved and he couldn't remember her face. Story of his life. Wanting one thing and getting another. Death by irony, which is only poetic stupidity. He got the joke and it didn't make him laugh at the moment. He nodded off for a while and felt tired. Just going to close his eyes and let go.

Situation no win
Rush for the change of atmosphere

    He opened his eyes enough to realize that the minute was over. He counted to sixty again to confirm and figured after a while he should get off the nasty floor. He cleaned the mess and felt revulsion at the smell. He can't be dying if he grossed out, that's a rule right? He cleaned up enough to seem presentable enough and he took a breath in. He recognized this feeling. It was adrenalin. He reached his hand towards the lump and found a hole in his leg. The angel was odd and he couldn't grasp the feel of it or how deep, but he knew that the adrenalin would end and leave him a mess if he didn't take advantage of it. How long? A half hour? He move quickly and excused the session telling them that he felt very ill and he didn't want to make them sick. Not a lie since he still was wearing his blood in his sweats. He told them they were ready and wished them luck and love and like how that sounded. He walked as quickly to the office and spoke to his friend outside of prying ears and explained his moment. He asked him if he was ok and he touched his hand to his pant leg and showed him his bloodied hand to dot the exclamation point as he told him he didn't know. He was going to home and then the clinic. He drove home in silence as a rush of pain hit him and screamed loudly, almost embarrassed on the sound of pain.

 

I can't go on so I give in
Gotta get myself right outta here

Ah life….nothing seems to help clarify priorities as believing that you almost lost your life. Nothing gives one's mind more thought on their mortality like an injury that forces them to slow down. The injury would for him to stop all activities. His days will be filled with slow movement, bleeding, and well wishers wishing well wanted wishes. The later would only make him wonder if there was ceremony in the act of if people understood what was at stake. His inactivity would force him to sit longer than he wanted. His weight would increase by 30lbs and his lung capacity would shrink of that of a three pack a day smoker. There is very little recovery that can take place when one's body is torn open. There is not much to do than to constantly replace bandages, apply ointments and alcohol in a place where it is already awkward to reach and no friend should have their friendship to be tested in any form of assistance requiring a helping hand. A forced lesson in humility that will continue to haunt him and force him to question what value he has on others. Not many people would welcome a cripple to their circles much less someone who continues to mutter how he's broken for sure. Bleed while walking. Bleed while sitting. Bleed while sitting.

If I have my time again
I would do it all the same
Ain't change a single thing

There is very little entertainment when you are not able to move with great range or stay put for too long. There is plenty of time to entertain doubt, question actions and to wonder what choices would be changed. And in every path of thought it led to the question on his health. It seems that hypocritical action lead to painful ends. It was not as if he smoked, drank and screw constantly. In fact it was the opposite side of the coin. He didn't care. He stopped caring after a while. He stopped looking at what he ate or simply didn't. He would push his body through hours of exercise and would eat only when his hands shook. He took enough painkillers to make him functional and numb to the world. He fought sleep for the solitude of the early morning and drank enough caffeine to help his condition arrive at the peak. Almost forced to relive his infancy, he relearned to feel hunger and thirst. He took advantage of sleep and to begin carrying food. He studied every confusing article on food and nutrition until he found what caused his injury.

Now I'm fully grown
And I know where it's at
Somehow I stayed thin
While the other guys got fat

Healing took time and had many stumbling blocks. Relearning how to walk without a cane and sit without bleeding tasked is patience yet made him motivated. Watching those around him advance in many ways while feeling not only hindered, but derailed was another lesson in humility. Swallowing the remains of pride made him realize that he was not immune to death. A misplaced blood clot would have cost more than his mobility. He decided to accept it more as a challenge than as a sentence to mediocrity. His studies assisted him in understanding what he lacked and offered him the greatest reason to test out his postulates. He submerged in what is and removed what was unfounded. Kant would have been proud. His questioning of all things led him to question his own faith, allegiances, and errors. His mind cleared the frivolous and meaningless actions from his life and stressed the moments where he had to take the chance rather than worry on embarrassments or the thoughts of others. He cut out people who drained him, wasted his effort, and did not understand his words. He couldn't get through the moments where he thought his words failed him. He held himself at a higher purpose rather than simply slink away is apathy. He understood that wisdom lacked the innovation of intelligence while intelligence alone had no direction without wisdom.
In simplicity, he refused to die stupidly and without meaning.
He still held on to certain habits and thoughts as a child would hold on to its blanket in refusal to continue on to the next step of life. There would be mornings that would hold on to those close almost is refusal. Others he dissected and question them, placing himself in the position of an apologist, which he despised. He knew that apologizing for a mistake would lead to nothing if he did not correct the action rather than just apologize for it. Pride in one's action usually lead to a blinding ego, if he was wrong there was no shame in admitting it and moving on. He questioned himself, his family, his view of the world and what he was willing to speak out for. He found he was disgusted with stupidity and his inability to speak out more so. He understood how to think before he spoke to make sure that he was heard correctly and he discovered the meaning in simply speaking from the heart. He questioned his motives and actions and found himself impatient with a vein of violence that frightened him. He understood that was better to quit his patience on what would only lead to his anger. He found no shame in letting go what frustrated him and to admit that he didn't know or understand. He had to embrace that even though life had placed heavy responsibility on his shoulders, he was only responsible for his actions right or wrong. Taking that responsibility for his action opened his heart a bit wider. Knowing that it was better to cut actions that lead to the harm of others than to apologize for them and continue the action did not make him a good man. It connected him not only to humanity, but to all of life. His studies took on a new meaning and he began to understand how everything was himself and how he was in everything.
Is it possible to love others while hating one's existence?
He would still wrestle with this a few years longer.
In the end, it gave him hope and he left behind those thoughts. It changed him from a condemned man forced to redeem himself to a child of stardust and time. A manifestation of all life given a moment in time to exist before returned to the continuity of being part of everything else. His divinity was not something that was proclaimed over all others, but as a manifestation of all others. He would still have to understand the roots of his of self hatred and that the love of another lead to it. He would yet have to question the x factor between him and so many. How one act of love can cause so much trouble and hurt. It will be at four years longer before any of this will come to light, but he had one thing he didn't have before. He had hope in himself and understanding that if he too responsibility for his actions, right and wrong, he would not be an animal as many have called him, but as simply a human being attempting to make things right with what he has on hand.
But that is not now……

Broken hearts are hard to mend
I know I've had my share
But life just carries on
Even when I'm not there

Moment of Respite

The flip side of the coin.

As it turns my mind floods with thoughts and ideas I force back the sleep and let my fingers expose the words trapped in an agitated mind by clumsy tongue, when the truth seeks escape in the form of voice rather than action. As if grasping wisps of smoke that gracefully tease toward rising orbits, I scramble to capture the moment in futile effort of making it justifiably true and now.

My soul in the Socratic Nature, yearned this time and I've yet to fulfill promises made in stressful moans and tearful goodbyes. I seek to commune with elders in the oven of my lost womb that birthed me a second time, giving me respite from grim grasp and an urgency that only the rushed can experience. Tearing one's nature apart may be the only way to satisfy everyone's promissory note as I ran out of half pound of heart flesh when I swore fidelity to infidels.

Crossroads remind me of where I travels as much as well worn heels of my vagabond shoes. Resident of my mind, native to my own fancy and brother to those who bleed, I've witnessed the decent of a creature known as man and the making of a beast that still wear a collar of a master lost. One can not accept the impotency of those moments that left a boy weak and the world a bit cruel. In arrival of scars earned from pilgrimages of future pasts and remnants of rose picked, one can not accept numerical equivalence to paths walked and dreams forgotten. The best answers are simply wordless moments where the weight is felt between knowing eyes and sighs shared for those who we lost behind.

For a flip of a coin, nothing is sacred and confessions are made to those who wear the dust of their sins. The ache of an age lost and decades forgotten return to us all and willing lies are set aside for ugly truth. Perhaps I speak into the vastness of my mind only to be lost in the echos. Mayhaps another is reached who share the same vein as I do and understand what is not said and what remains untold. Perhaps I ramble on as madness takes me as so many time before leaving me to a prison of failed words that die without conveying my plea. Mayhaps, I simply write to record my fear and wail to the world that sees me as what it made me rather than the one who is trapped behind time knowing that I will one day lay within the dust of many.

I do not know. For the toss of a coin I find a voice, if not my own then who elses?

Love's Naloxone Or Taking the Anti-love pill. Part Six – I Need a Lover: Act 1

I'm on a roll at the moment.

Right now I have them laughing to the point that tears are forming. One of them is breathing hard and the other is talking back at me giving me the feed back that makes me spin my story even wilder. I'm known for my stories. Perhaps it goes through the blood line and my ancestry comes in to play with a +5 to charisma and performance checks. Or perhaps it's because my first love so many lives ago was theater and my brand of humor has always had a masochistic flare that gives me a vibe of Charlie Brown facing the apocalypse that encompasses the meaning of 'Good Grief' as the understatement of the millennia.

    And wasn't it Stephen King who wrote that "humor is almost always anger with its make-up on", and if it's anything I would know it's anger. Most of the moments that I share are more then enough to incite laughter and joy, yet at the moment that they happened I more than always have been paying dues. Art demands pain and pain is something I can understand. Right now, I'm going on the routine on the train wreck of my social life. A train wreck that I find amazing since for the past 5 years I have done my best not to be in a relationship. And yet as if the cosmos demand to be amused, even in my Ugly Phase, I end up getting my heart broken, used, tossed aside and dumped. All to my surprised because,

 

They said, "I didn't know you were dating anyone (her)" and I said, neither did I!


Laughter erupts this time as one of them says that she's going to pee her pants. She's trying to beg me to stop, but I'm going for the kill. Her companion is nodding his head as if he either has lived this horrible moment or he understands. Their third companion is in shock and still continuing that feedback. I killed. If I was doing stand up in a club you'd have a least a few spit takes. In real life, it was a moment of confusion and shock. It's as if someone walked up to you and told you that you came in third place and you have no idea that you were in a contest. That I had in some moment of time the heart of this woman and that she felt that one point I had her to a point that she had to take a moment of her life to burn that bridge between us citing that we had our run and it was special, but she wanted to give love a chance with someone else. That it was best that I let her go and wish her well. That even though what that moment meant for us that I do not have her heart and that she will not look back.

I'm so confused, my mind is indifferent

 
She took a page from my book. She did everything she could to make certain that I would not chase after her like the movies we'd watch on her couch. The protagonist running in the rain trying to catch that girl who meant something to him, that missing piece that made his life whole. She made certain that she left months before moving away. Slowly limiting our contact all the while asking for moving boxes or to water he plants, she took steps to make certain that I would not chase after her. Once safe she sent message over Little Snitch of our ending time and she blocked me for seeing her virtually only allowing a glimpse of someone new sharing a photograph.

She took a page from my book. It was only a shame that she didn't take the right ones.

I need a lover that won't drive me crazy
Some girl to thrill me and then go away

    You see I've been here before. I've seen it happen and I've lived this role time and time again. It's the role that I play well and is typecast in. A role that I've more than once have gambled on my dignity and emotions on knowing on the end and the cost of the outcome. It only took one moment in my life to live it and to pull the remains of my life together. Only once to realize when the void hits and that empty pain that comes from some deep chamber of the soul in which my own endocrine system was not my friend. I've lived the role of the heart broken, the jilted lover, the other man, the guy warming up, the friend who consoles the heartbroken maiden only there to reassure her own worth. I've been the dumped who has had his world end for the loss of his one true love so many times that I can bear to tell most of them that my life was not left in ruins and that I've been not committed for a rash act of despair. I've said it so many times that even though women want to be your Last Love which most women find romantic as leaping off a cliff I've more then educated individuals who lost that leg of chromosome that they want you decimated and suicidal on their leaving. I've pulled many heartbroken off the ground and pulled that urge for understanding and justice that they call for and pulled them on their feet again. A woman needs you broken when she leaves, hence the best vengeance is to strut away whole.

It always hurts them that you moved on. Funny too.

Well I'm not wiped out by this poolroom life I'm living
I'm gonna quit this job, go to school, or head back home

I've moved on to my Cosmo routine now. Letting them know that sometimes the ideas placed into a woman's mind are not always in for a man's benefit. My three horror stories leave them dying and disgusted in the right places. There are moments where they look at me wondering if I'm lying only to be reassured that the scars on my body are not without their merit and the memories made not always forgotten. They know these women as Horror story one, two, and three. They do not know the individuals. They don't know that #1 is the sweetest person you can ever run into. Someone who you'd refuse to curse around for fear of them breaking out in tears, someone who takes moments to pet dogs, meow and kitten and coo at babies. Not a violent person at all. And yet I was her gateway to sadism. In the end, she would label me as an asshole and taught me the lesson that I may rebuild a woman from the hell of another man, but in truth I was her outlet that he could not provide and once broken she would always return to have me piece her together and make her whole only to return to her sadist in return. Someone who I learned to regret an answering machine with recorded messages of despair and need.

And they say stalkers can't be adorable.

I need a lover that won't drive me crazy
Some girl that knows the meaning of a
Hey hit the highway

    They're not laughing now. It's more of an awed hush then an eruption in laughter. They laugh and begin to ask me what the next is. I mean, it can't be worse that #1?

#2 would accuse me of having a "Shattered Chakra". Someone who believes in the Earth Mother and in a brilliant intellectual security that is neither intellectual or secure that you give out to the Universe what you want to be given to Self. Fun with tofu. Someone who rejoiced at my vegetarianism and commitment to a wholesome life and yet would mock my presumed violent nature in which is why the Earth Mother wept for her misguided children. A woman made of legs that would end only into lust, who's every movement was poetry and who believed in long lovemaking and doing what is necessary to continue it. I mean really? Cosmo? Why? A woman who would negate the harm caused with the surety of Aphrodite behind her. In the end, I would be like the rest and a pig. Yet she taught me that any one with a "Holier than thou" outlook could be dangerous regardless of where the holy is coming from. She would be the reason why I would begin to carve maps of territory and why I selfishly keep restaurants and happy places from significant others.

 

Well I've been walkin' the streets up and down
Racing through the human jungles at night

 
They all cringe. I cringed too. I still do, but for them it's the cringe that leads to the laugh after Homer falls and screams Do'h.

 
#3 was a hedonist's dream. A blue haired mistress who believed in honesty, the use of a choke chain, and that nothing was taboo. A woman who believed that her vagina would make men kneel and any who dared not to would taste her boot. A disciple of the Marquis, she understood that truth was only given with pain and beauty was to be sculpted from the screams of her models. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is Holy. There is no meaning to No. The pleas of her Toy only proved to her that she knew what was best for you even though your interest were not factored. In the end, she was translucent as her role and as much as she hid with sexuality she was only a little girl with a magnifying glass, pampered with her own ideal of rebellion that a lofty life would bring and a trust fund from "human excrement" could provide for their spawn. She taught me the importance of No, the knowledge that I can endure any painful act of humiliation and that those who demand something from others have never gotten it from the willing.

    Never trust the Blue Haired Girl.

 

Hey I'm so weak, won't somebody shut off that light
Electricity runs through the video
And I watch it from this hole I call home

    And with that they get their "ewww" into shocked laughter. They laugh and cover their mouths as if they see the moment coming towards them. Two of the individuals are not as shocked it seems, but the surprise is more than enough to place everyone on the same level. No one likes sadistic surprise and they ask me if I accepted the parting gift. I reply no, but no didn't mean much to her at left it at that. We've all shared that laugh and what good would all that ordeal be if not worth the laugh? They laughed at a story that caused them to forget their thoughts and maybe even be worth sharing with another human being.

My laughter is different. I don't see moments and think it's particularly enjoyable or a joy in reliving. Many times I don't laugh at all. It's a form of therapy for me. My small way of telling someone that I survived a moment that only few would consider pleasure. There are those dark nights that I often question my judgment on how and why I was ever there. What caused me to seek those individuals? Why am I a sort of lightning rod for them? I always ask a friend in a bad relationship a simple question that always get's them thinking. I ask them this and they start reflecting that something in their own behavior has caused them to find the individual in question attractive, and in some cases attractive enough to over look tendencies that if a random stranger happen to commit the less of those trespasses they would have been in police custody. A question that has us tear the roots of our self apart and to analyze what makes us who we are and how we deal with those aspects, good or bad. And so I ask me myself again a question that in many ways the only x factor is myself.

What was it about them that I needed that I didn't have in myself?

I often wonder if I ever had them in a room together, every woman I've ever had a relationship with. Good or bad. Memorable and forgotten. The ones that bring a smile to my face and the ones that make me question my judgment as an adult. If they all were placed in the room together I could see the following. I can see that they were all women. They might have one or two things in common and the majority would have nothing in common with each other and a minority would not want to be in that room with each other. And yet, somehow I am this common thread. This one individual that have touched their lives and made them think I was at least good enough to sleep with. I was fun enough to spend a moment with, few months with or couple of years on and off. Some of them talked about meeting parents, others didn't care or want to know that I had children. Some we talked into the night and never so much kissed while others I've never had much of a conversation that was memorable. Some were between relationships and a few I was going to assume the other man, the one you supplement with for the lacking of others.

    And there it is. The common thread of all of them. I supplemented something missing from someone else they have either dated, were dating or were in a committed relationship with. I was fun for the moment and a joy, but like Disneyland no one wants to go there every day. I seem to make them happy for a moment of time and after that point, they leave. Some break it off bluntly. Some never call back. A few have had a long conversation with me and we mutually realize that we have no future and that it would be best to go our ways. Out of those only three have we held each other tightly and realize that one day we may cross paths or we remain good friends.

I'm certain that the majority of people have at least experienced that much. But a huge chunk of these women, all reasonable seeming and very bright fall into a category in which it would seem I've gotten more than my fair share. Many of them have tried to come back after in most cases they left me either confused or just left me for someone else. In those moments we have coffee in a public place and they explain to me how they were in a strange place and they were discovering themselves and how I was not right for them at the moment. And yet, they had some Oprah moment in a wheat field or facing the ocean in which they discovered what it was to be a woman. They realized that I was good for them and that the guy they often left me for was the worst king of person imaginable. In some cases, they seem to describe it as an upset stomach after too much curry and that plain oatmeal was what they had wanted after all.

    And in every case I've asked simple questions that have always seem to cut to the bone. I've asked if they were sleeping with them while we were seeing each other. That usually messes up their train of thought. I then ask if I or any other man have done this to them would they have enough resolve to have them forgive? I then usually ask them why am I so important to them now that they didn't think was important to them then. I've still to get a response. Instead I usually had gotten frustration, anger and even threats. After leaving I have gotten calls, messages and even a letter or two back then, email today. It's these interactions that have made me gather some sort of thought and realize when a relationship is over there is no salvaging it. That if it was important….if I was important I would have been made to feel so. Instead I have been made into a security blanket. Someone who in many times makes them feel better, help them through a hardship only to go back and get stomped on again and then I am sought out to put them back together again. Saddening. It's here that I learned to not help a woman in any relationship that has ended. I don't help women in their break ups. The last individual it seems believes that I have taken advantage of her grief enough to fool around with me several times. I'm a dense person, but I'm in no way one to take advantage of anyone's grief.

And yet, it just leads me to embrace my antisocial tendencies more manifesting my Ugly Phase. Nothing really lets you know how much of value you are to someone as when they toss you aside or need you to fix them up. I've even stopped trying to be nice, while not attempting to be cruel either. There have been moments where the sound of my name is synonymous with asshole. I've come to the point where I'm willing to pick someone up and at the same time shove them away from clinging to me like a crutch. And as all crutches they are valuable and needed when one is broken and can no stand alone. And when independence has arrived in a moment of clear conscious the crutch is toss aside once more. It is not thanked for its purpose as much as sandpaper is acknowledged for it's task or paper used to remove refuse of any type. It is there to be used, tossed aside and forgotten as long as it benefits them.

Only when broken once more am I of value. I can not express to you how hurtful that is to me. My existence needed only to remove pain and suffering of others. Never seen as human but as divine, and as we all know the divine are absolved of basic human needs. So my phone is off. My email and messages filtered. And I cringe when I see the words "I need you." Mind, body and soul, I have been there for the need of others rather than…..I can not find the words. I can not find the words to describe a desire of a person simply due to their character rather than their potential to give relief to another. Words either fail me once more or my use of them has perverted their original meaning to a point I can not see their roots.


And so I seal myself just a bit further from the grasp of others with resolve of remaining alone.

All the stony's are dancin' to the radio
And I got the world calling me up here

Writing this on the couch, I'm a million miles away from everyone and yet at the finger tips of the right people. The House Matron purrs sweetly as she ignores me scaling up the couch near my head. In the corner of her eye she tries to catch my eye while looking as regal as always. Her winter coat has given her a bad image as being soft and cuddly as she licks claws that have eviscerated bird, mouse and finger. She coyly curls herself loosely as she unfurls her tail towards me. She does not want to be touched much less held and protests much at the task and yet she slowly tries to catch my attention with one sleepy eye open. The more I ignore her more she stretches until she has taken over my lap completely. The battle of wills ends as she finally begins to groom me with her rough tongue with a claw digging into my arm just short enough to draw blood. Watching her, I can't help to think that perhaps that it's me. That after a while you can't deny math and say that you are not a factor in attracting such attention.

There has to be something that I'm doing. I'm probably going to regret it, but I'm going to have to grok this just a little more. Until then I will remain just inches from unattainable and close enough to be cursed at. Before the thought can pull me under and make me spiral in a self doubting chain I pull the cork from the bottle and make quick accounting on how much is left. I have insurance in a drawer, saving it for a happy moment or a quick release. Bowie plays on the earphones and the Matron now rubs her head against my hand. I draw a sip and let it burn slowly down my throat. Not tonight. I'm not opening that tomb right now. Right now I'm content with the Matron in my lap and Stephen Fry making me laugh.

The matron scratches me and retreats to the other end of the couch. Hail Britannia.

And I'm not askin' to be loved or be forgiven
I just can't face shakin' in this bedroom
One more night alone

Handful of Dust: The fear of winning.

There is a certain peace in sitting in the dark that I've come to appreciate as an adult that would have terrified me as a child. Perhaps not a child, but perhaps in my early teens. I've come to realize now that I've always been afraid most of my life. Terrified really. A fear that seems to bind to the bone and refuses to let lose even onto death. the kind of terror that is given to a child when their minds are yet too mailable to hold to any thought at all. A primitive dread that is given to mother to child as I've come to discover. A dread that has in every way pulled me deep within the walls of my mind and kept me locked in for years.

The kind of dread that wakes you up at night and if there happens to be someone sharing you bed you burrow into them deep and hope that whatever holds you will let you go. Or if alone, you only pray that it never gets you alone. Then you count blessings or what small ritual that you have saved as a small child to protect you from the terrors.

I'm trying to prove a point with myself. Some would call it pulling the tiger's tail or even challenging God's wrath. I'm actually, as Salvador Dalli would hint to, attempting to submerge into my psyche as deep as possible in order to find what refuses to come to light. I'm feeling quite suicidal in fact. Not in the way youth would listen to an angst filled song and play with knives, but in a diving head first into an empty pool. By the end of this I plan on either understanding what still drags me back into the worst of myself or not see the morning.

I'm that determined.

I've always was fond of what Niche have said about staring into the abyss. How the greatest potential of evil always lies dormant within. The Jungian view would say that we gravitate to our symbols, choosing what we find as either talismans or even siguls that lay as warnings of greater things. We seem to find something to embody our terrors. My daughter has a terror of octopi. It comes to mind now since I would and have envied the concept of having something tangible to dread. Something to either physically run from or throw stones at. My terror is not as simple and yet it still grips me now as I try to meet what ever eyes it may have and force it to come to surface.

I'm having doubts even now as I wonder how I'm going to write this. Trying to find every corner in my mind where a thought may hide to may be hidden, I feel a bit of an arousal. The kind you get for walking into a pith dark room trying to remain calm and not run out screaming. I think this is why I love Lovecraft's work so much. The thought of some great overwhelming terror so huge that it renders the witness mute and limp as their mind enters some sort of insanity that arrives at the point where reality has fallen from it's hinges and the face of the terror that we all assumed we lies comes to be. It smiles into us, or so we think it does as we attempt to find some sort of handle that we can grasp and humanize it. The Olde Gods, the terrors that lies unseen in a flimsy vale that only offers holes into what we are almost able to bare. I adore those stories since in truth they do not frighten me in the least bit. The promise of Olde Gods tearing apart our world and making us feel once again that we are nothing but food to some, insignificant to the rest.

And yet, I've known horror. Not the kind with a monster or creature with some sort of mimicry of humanity, but from people itself. I've seen in my time on this world acts of horror that have cause me to bawl as a babe with no shame and cause me to pull hair out. I've seen individuals shamble about as one would turn in wretched fright someone who was torn asunder and attempt to pick up parts of themselves from the ground in an act of returning to a normal that is forever away from their grasp. Their, our, lives were never the same and we still stay up in the darkness of night wondering how a loving God could allow such horror to come true. How could civilized intellectuals simply allow in any part of their world. How such scars heal and leave so little unmarked flesh left of those who survived the ordeal. Some call us stronger or even survivors over those who were mangled in accidents and deserve pity. How our limbs still remain attached and how lucky we were to walk "unmarked", not "unharmed".

That horror.

And so, I look into myself and in my past and try to grasp that moment that I've became tainted with fear. I've always feared being weak or failing to do what is needed due to fear. Especially with so many depending on me. So many needing me to be whole and to carry on as if nothing has happened. I still walk hollowed time to time knowing that no one, but T.S. Eliot could understand such desolence. I understand now that most of my fear is given by those who meant well. Fear protects us and keeps us from doing foolish acts of stupidity in hopes of passing on our material to those who we will fill with fear also.

And yet, there is something within us all that yearns for rebellion against any tyrannical force that attempts to hold us down. I can feel it now deep within my loins how it plays with my fear. How it alters my self doubt and manipulate me with what I fear the most and what others may see. It drives me to stop writing and drink. It screams at me to get up and force my fist through the screen. It makes me run into the night and find any diversion to what I'm so close to unearthing. These are the moments are the point of time where we always turn away and cower in our skin or where we reach to hands onto the blade that menace us and grab hold. It will cut and tear us and the pain of it makes any of us cringe at the thought and yet U have to reach out and grab. Damned be my hands, I'm going to grab hold of it and shake it loose. I'm going to put fear of me into it.

I'm going to fight it on it's own terms: Dirty.

It does not care how long it has kept us frightened or terrified of what can be or will if we don't do this or that. Cross ourselves or say please or thank you. It tower over us and holds us down until it chooses when to let go and on what terms it will. Perhaps it's because of Avey or maybe I've simply lived enough hell to know that it can not be worse than this. Or maybe I've just realized I have nothing to lose if it bests me. Maybe I've come to realize that those who have "went down the street" have chosen to pull their trump card and meet the only terms of victory they have in the form of a stalemate only they can justify.

Damn it, I've done so much with my life and I've committed so much good and erred so severely in my youth.

I'm not a bad person. I'm never was a bad person. And yet, I can not let go of guilt of any errors. Guilt, the only thing I've gotten from Catholicism and I'm not catholic. My sense of shame from someone else and never mine at all. I'm amazed on how many battles I've fought and come to terms that it was never my battle in the first place. The costly sacrifices that I've paid only to realize that the battles won were of someone who never will fight them.

We are Hollowed.

And so I stare into the abyss and it stares back and it is me.

............

I once has an intervention. Seems that someone caught wind of what I wrote and tried to reach/understand/save me. I ended up laughing admitting that my face was sore since I do not laugh enough to have my face accustomed to it. they've asked why do I write it if not to ask for help. I told them that I write in hopes on not "going down the street". So that I don't feel suicidal and do something that I or more like others will regret. I stare over the edge not to plunge over, but to make sense of it. To understand what scares me I have to scare it back. If I do not keep it at bay it will come for me and drag me in. I've already had years lost to it as I somehow got turned loose and know that vigilance and quick and cruel action keeps it not only back, but may even give up some ground.

In truth, I write this because it seems as if I'm winning and it frightens me. I'm a creature of habit and I'm used to a struggle to the last second. I've never won anything by showing up and I do not expect to. And yet, I know that there may come a time soon that I can be at peace without worrying of what I say, how I act and what thoughts I entertain. There may come a time that I can live open and free from any fears that I've come to carry as a child or develop now. And to do so I have to challenge what ever lies silent and root it out.

.........and then again, I may not see the morning.

We will see.

I think I'm winning.

And that now scares me.