An amalgam of sorrows and the wisdom they give

Lately I find myself trying to change how I view the world and people around me. I try to put myself in their shoes when I smile at them and they don’t smile back, maybe they are the same as I am, and are nervous about someone trying to reach out and form a connection with them. Much the same as I am. It’s hard to change when I’m always so afraid, trying to move forward when I feel like I’m going crazy in my head seems like an exercise in futility. As if I’m running in quicksand with concrete shoes.
Talking to my friends, I’ve realized that I attempt to make things work until I have a breakdown, I force myself to do things that I hate, and to be in situations that make me unduly nervous, as if I’m testing myself, and somehow magically this time will turn out better than in the past. I force myself till there’s nothing left, no way for me to fake my brain out any longer and then I collapse.
More and more now, I find myself thinking about when I was young. I try to pinpoint where things took a turn from endless possibilities, to the same path stretching on into eternity. The exact moment when I started to live in fear of everything, the exact moment when I told myself that this was how it is, this is what everything is, nothing more, nothing less. The farther those early memories slip into the past as I age; it’s harder to recall if I was happy more than I was sad, comforted more than I was scared.
People are fond of ridiculous sayings. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, view the world through rose-colored glasses; two in the hand one in the bush, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Do people say these things because they lack the courage to voice their feelings and have to rely on puritanical proverbs? I cannot point even one finger, as I have been lying to myself all my life, never mind anyone else.
Now I’m caught in the middle, in a sea with no land in sight, velvety bitter regrets swirl around my body, they weigh me down and drag me just under the surface, convincing me that this is the end. The end is near, and I feel it, but I am not afraid. Funny that, how I’m terrified of everything in life but now I’m no longer afraid of dying or death. Not so unafraid that I’d actually willingly seek it out, but when it comes I won’t be afraid of it.
My brain feels like the ever-changing house, in House of Leaves. Hanging tape measures and lighting flares and using fishing line to mine the dark depths of things I’ve long forgotten will do absolutely no good. In the next instant, they will be gone, replaced by a door far too narrow to slip through, a flat gray wall that stretches in both directions forever. My brain is not a peaceful place, it feels like it changes on a whim, and I’m only along for the ride. Well I want off this ride, I get motion sickness, and I want to be the captain of this crazy train, this runaway cruise ship. Maybe I will be one day, maybe never. Maybe I should just not think about it anymore. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

It's a very very mad world....

The landscape doesn't change all that much, the same dried out shrubbery, the damaged earth, the way the sun scorches everything. The difference is, through fogged over windows, or clear, tinted, or cracked; everyone looks desperate here.



Desperation has a certain look.



Everyone drives quickly, like they are constantly late for an important meeting, hurtling toward the horizon at breakneck speed, the freeways are ten lanes wide and still not big enough.



Everything here is super sized and too small.



Here is the land of anorexic tan skeletons. It's only acceptable when you can see your spine from the front, and lead with your hips in a way that screams sex and not, hideous bone malformation!

This is the epicenter of superficiality.

The whole state lives in a constant vortex of self centeredness. There are standards that everyone here has to live up to. Not very many of said standards make any sense at all to anyone but everyone blindly follows them.

Lemmings.

Traffic signs mean nothing. Red and green arrows mean nothing. U turns are so normal they are almost expected at every light and stop sign that no one pays attention to. Honking is another language, and one that people use often and without any kind of sense.

As if this will solve any problems.

This place is like a mirage, a facade for something unholy. Behind the mask of ocean, beach, tans, and perfectly white teeth; lurks something dark and foul. The kind of filthy horror that some obsess is in their closets or in dreams, the kind that force insomnia and make a person glance over their shoulder in the middle of the day, in a crowd of people.

The lid has to come off sometime.

With so much repression the dark filthy shit builds up, with no outlet it searches out the cracks where the light seeps in, it looks for a way to get to the surface. Why should it explode out with wild fury, when it can creep out languorously. Picking and choosing who it wants to torment and infect.

In time it all falls down anyway.

Your Throat Is In My Grip

You want to be somebody, you want to be somebody. You aren't anybody, not anybody. I have your throat in my grip, I've made a list, a list of declarations. I want what I want, your throat is in my grip and you will do what I want, now. I want my money back from this show, this show that you think is so great. My list is written out on my arm, the ink is leeching into my blood, the words are like acid, ammonia. You want to be somebody, I want to be somebody, we both won't get what we want. Bring in the riot squad, let them try and free somebody, put me out of my misery! Militia cold, bred for battle, your throat is in my grip, see the world through my eyes. bloodshot and insomnia wired, crucify my nervous body. Machine gun roar, feedback from speakers that tower to the sky, if you aren't dead yet, then sing along, sing along, fists to teeth, fingers in flesh. Your throat is in my grip. You want to be somebody, you want to be somebody. You aren't anybody, no you aren't anybody!

This Ship Is Built For One

When I close my eyes, on my back, on my bed. I imagine that I am on a ship. The three narrow windows are the prow, cutting waves into the weed choked dirt, plowing steadily through our friends real boat, and then into the neighbors house. With my eyes closed, I am the captain and the conductor of this ship that sails through my veins. With my eyes closed there is only sky above me, and only sea below me, sharks and wales, lobsters and clown fish. I wind into marinas and slip through inlets, easing into the water with my scuba gear, sinking into the cool depths. When I spread my arms and reach with my fingers, I am an albatross. I sweep over highways and bridges, the wind current pulling my flight in new and interesting directions, the rain is like mist on my feathers and the sun is pleasantly warm. Lighthouses show my progress away from the land, the smell of salt beckoning me like an old familiar friend, the air pushing damply against my face. When I open my eyes, on my back, on my bed, the canopy dances above me in the air from the cooler, whispering secrets of next time. Next time.

...No Hell Below Us

I always thought that when you became an adult, that that was when you were grown up. Once you got there you didn’t keep going, didn’t keep learning things that should’ve already been learned. Lately I’ve been finding that it isn’t remotely close to the truth. For as long as I can remember I’ve had preconceived notions of how my life is going to go. I was the one who played house and just knew I was going to grow up and have a husband that loved me, and kids and everything was going to be perfect. I grew up enough to get married and then I realized that things weren’t perfect but definitely not boring. People I know are getting married and having babies, ones who I always thought I’d be ahead of when it came to certain things. Shows you how much I know, now doesn’t it? Learning more than I thought I would at this stage of the game, might be more, or maybe less, jarring if I could just figure out how I want my life to move on from this point. So many things seem to be half-finished and discarded that I don’t even know what some of them are any more. Sometimes I think I’m losing my mind, I long to be on medication, but don’t want to be handicapped by some synthetic drug that’ll tell me that I’m happy now. I don’t want to have panic attacks that make me feel like I’m preparing to go on an epic roller coaster ride. I don’t want to disappoint anyone and I need to get help but I’m scared that I won’t know what to do, I won’t know how to be, without my fake self wrapped around my real self. I’ve been this way for so long that I’m not sure what I’m really like. I’m scared that I’m not like anything, that I’m really a blank canvas, that all I am is a reflection of everyone around me, secretly I am nothing at all. Nothing worth anything at all. I worry that I am secretly a shadow, that if everyone I know were to stand in a room together and say things about me, on the same subject; that everyone would be different and none of them would be true. I worry that the real me was the child in high school, the one who was alone for the most part, living life through books and music and collages. What if that was the real me? I don’t even remember what that person was like. Just that they were lonely, and possibly creative. How does one find their real self after it’s been lost? Is it lost forever and instead one has to be picked out like a secondhand dress? If you lose the self you had when you were born, does it mean that you’re just out of luck now? Maybe I never had a self at all and was just lucky enough to fake my way all the way here. But what now? What now. Maybe nothing now, maybe I’m doomed to be a secret shadow, a blank canvas, stuck waiting.