Dear Die-ary,

I am without a doubt feeling my urge to write diminish.  Looking at the whole thing honestly, it’s in the wee hours of the morning that I want to check in, leave my mark, something that says “On this night, at this time, Nny was here.”  But aside from that, it’s been harder and harder to come up with a topic I haven’t already hammered into a pulsating bloody sticky mass on the floor dozens of times.

In that, then, it’s been seeming to take more energy than it’s truly worth- do I try and come up with something that would really be interesting and enjoyable to write about, rack my brain for a truly inspired topic, something at least distracting enough to hide the fact that here, on the bathroom of my mind, my only real driving motivation is to carve into the wall night after night “2:45am Nny wuz here”?  It doesn’t seem to have a noble enough intention behind it anymore to warrant the daily attention.

Certainly it was once the case that the words were spilling out of me and I couldn’t keep them back.  But now that I feel that projectile vomiting subsiding, I’ve been noticing the panicked urge to stick the finger down my throat, drink the Ipecac, eat really bad food, just to keep the habit going because it was one of the defining points of my existence.  I have other ways to define my existence now, particularly the fact that I do indeed breathe, move, blink and so forth day after day.  I have nothing to prove to anyone, least of all myself.

God knows I’ll return to this porcelain throne if I have any more words to vomit, but for now, inducing the nasty habit on the sheer principle of “Well, I’m here, aren’t I?” just seems to be feeding into something that will eventually turn far uglier than it inherently was.

Till then, Die-ary, toodles.

Dear Die-ary,

This entry marks the beginning of my last day as a free man.  Tomorrow, we start work back at the Food Bank again.  Just… envision the sort of expletives and raging comments I’d normally throw at a deeply frustrating situation, don’t worry it’ll come to you, I haven’t the energy for it right now.

Also, MIDNIGHT MUFFIN RUN!!!  Damn that was a good muffin.  So worth the paranoia of getting pulled over for that fucking tail light.  Need to get that fixed…

Watched a movie with Mia, who didn’t treat me like some kind of a leper.  That was a good thing.

Overall, it’s been a pretty good night so far.

4:10am

Just noticed I’m wearing two pairs of underpants.  At the risk of giving away where I’ve been spending my time online lately…

What the Hell, BBQ?

Dear Die-ary,

Cleaning went far too fast this morning.  Even took the trash out- it was a lovely dark walk to the community dumpster.  Now I have nothing to do.

I’ll have to run to the Staples later for paper and pens.  Running out of art materials.  Tom’s been on a drawing binge lately and I can’t say I haven’t, either.  When do they open?  Eight?  Ten?  They better hope to god it’s eight.  I’m bored.

9:56pm

Haven’t been able to really dredge up the motivation to write.  God knows it’d just be re-hashing the same old shit.  In fact, I’ll boil it down to the most common recurring themes:

- People are sacks of feculant waste

- Who am I and why am I here?

- Insert most recent paranoia, voice, personal demon, apparition, talking knick-knack or conspiracy theory

- CAN I really die, and if so, please?

- Ensuing self-pep talk, dragging self out of a suicidal state

- Feelings, urges, compulsions: Gotta hate ‘em

- FUCK SLEEP and why does it keep happening to me?!

And last but not least,

- I’d like to disembowel and/or dismember _____
(adding to the list of people who have thus far been saved from a certain and entertaining death only by the physics, rules and Directives of this reality and System)

There it is.  Roughly eight major themes, each with their own subcategories and twists in their manifestations, but ultimately that’s what 85 entries will tell you.  Glad to have saved you the trouble.

10:13pm

I’m getting so tired of hiding away.

I’d got home this morning after going to Staples, then to the library to fuck around briefly online.  Nothing held my interest.

I knew that Mia would be home, and though she had said to Tom earlier this week that there was no point in me pretending to be him- that she could just tell when I was here, in this body- there were times when I knew I was better at it than others.  I was ready to pull that mask on, HARD, shamelessly, just to be around someone.  It was a weird mood, I’ll tell you that much.

Now this is unusual- I’m feeling extraordinarily lonely as of late (and I generally wouldn’t admit to that).  There are lots of other things to do in this life than put up with people’s bullshitting just to distract oneself from a gaping chasm of loneliness.  And for the life of me, I couldn’t find one of them.  Everything I wanted to do just reminded me of that hole, telling me something was missing.  It took a lot of energy just to keep away from the suicidal side of things.

Then when I got home… nobody there.

Now that was really depressing.  All I ever really want is a house to myself, free of irritants and distractions, plenty of space to write and draw and generally enjoy myself.  On the one day I wouldn’t have minded sharing the space, there was nobody to share it with.

Texted you, of course.  No response.

Drew a picture (it came out quite lovely, despite the disturbing content).  Feeling empty- nobody to show it to.

It got to be around six and I got alarmed- Leland at least would have been home by now.  Broke down and called Mia, asking if he was up the hill.  Of course he was.  Nobody would be home for hours.

Went to the Starbucks (library closed after 4).  Everything online just seemed dead.  A couple hours cruising the cold reaches of the internet just made the loneliness sting deeper.  Went home just before dark, fully expecting someone to be there.  Nothing.  Almost ready to cry.

I settled for sitting, writing about WHATEVER, and putting on some good music.  There was no way I was going to let myself fall down that Well again.  Started to burn a new CD for the car (all the music out there is really making me want to strangle kittens) when the computer BSOD’d.  It was at that moment, when I was glaring at the laptop (which was making this strange screaming-in-pain noise from the moment in the music where it crashed) that everyone walked in the door.

I turned on the Tom full blast- I felt that my presence would be awkward, so I forced a strong impersonation.  Yet, somehow, doing that caused a double-clutch and knocked me into the backseat, bringing him out.  Now THAT was annoying.  I didn’t want to be alone and now he got to be the one to get all sociable while I was braindead and drooling all over the back of his mind.

I forced my way back out by the end of the evening, but Mia and Leland were already sucked into playing a video game together, and the little sketch I did of an Evil Thing went vaguely appreciated.  I felt the living room stretch to abnormal proportions as they faded to the other end, a mile away, while my chair drifted back into a Nothingness and the distance between myself and People stabbed me in the chest a few times.  My only comfortable option was to retreat to the room to sit, feel empty, and complain about how I have nothing to write about.

It brings me to the point of all this.  I’ve had several good reasons for hiding/impersonating:

a) I didn’t want to deal with people questioning me.

b) I liked my solitude.

c) At the time, it seemed like my stay would be short so I didn’t want to overcomplicate things by getting involved.

d) It didn’t seem like many people would like me.

e) My original directive, I thought, was to make things BETTER for Tom, not worse, and it seemed like me making an announcement of my presence would only serve to fuck things up.

But almost all of these things have been invalidated.  One, the people in this house already know I’m here and I’ve gone out of my way to hold my peace, for far longer than should be required of someone just trying to make some attempt at “politeness”.  Two, solitude is obviously wearing on me.  Three, it would appear I’m here for the long haul and a temporary fix to an ongoing problem will only hold up so well.   Four, maybe without that whole killing thing getting in the way, I’m a bit more likable than I thought I was- I’ve had two people attest to that, against all credibility.  And five, theoretical Directives can go take a running leap- NOT A THING has proven to be a solid purpose for my presence, and I really don’t see how sitting around, pretending to be someone else is going to change ANYTHING.

I just… can’t come up with a good reason to keep hiding away like this.  Not anymore.  All I know for a fact is that, for over THREE MONTHS now, every single night (heh, excluding the ones where I was dead) and on many days, I’ve been wrenched from a Void, forced to live in a body that is not my own, and sat, bored and festering, in a tiny oppressive room, keeping my silence, choosing isolation over imposition.  I’m tired of pretending that I don’t exist solely for the comfort of others. Maybe it’s time to drop the charade.

Mia at least seems grateful for my self-serving cleaning fixation, so that sets us off on a better foot this time around.  That, I step into cautiously.  Still don’t have a solid opinion on her.  All I know for a fact is that she makes me more uncomfortable than most people do- it must be her perceptiveness.  I feel naked under her eyes.  It comes with paranoia, I suppose.

Hmph.  It’s after 11 and I’ve finally noticed the text you sent at 9.  Just my luck today.

Don’t want to sleep.  Seriously hoping you want to hang out now.

Or maybe I’ll just go talk to Mia.  Sounds like she’s still up.

5:15pm

Dear Die-ary,

Just posting up all my backlogged entries.

After entering the last one, I noticed the “Need an idea for your next post?” section on WordPress.
It pulls up three random supposedly thought-provoking prompts apparently designed to get the creative juices flowing.  Obviously I never really have a problem coming up with things to write about, as evidenced by my 84 entries since July, so usually I just ignore that section.

But for the first time, one of the prompts caught my eye.

“How do YOU make yourself feel better when you’re really angry?”

Hoooo boy.

First came the Grin, then the laughter crept in.  WOULDN’T YOU FUCKING LIKE TO KNOW?!  Why don’t you come over and I’ll show-  Then, a cutoff.  A scowl.  Remembering where I am.  Clenched fists, gritted teeth.  The urge to throw the laptop across the room.  Faces spinning round me, laughing.  That gaggle of middle school girls who’d yelled what a “nice” van I was driving- they’d painted big red X’s across their chests, made me feel predatory, and yet I gripped the steering wheel and kept driving.  The Eyes ever watching.  Feel I’m going to crack.  Soon.  Gotta hold it together.  Can’t throw this life, this chance away-

Hmph.  What I do when I get really angry… is go just a little fuckin’ crazier inside, I think.

Fuck you and your prompts.

dear dieary entry make later eye medicine bad pain cant see
wake up midnight again weird pattern night noise
owie

1:45am

Dear Die-ary,

A clarification on that blurb (which I couldn’t properly write at the time because I jabbed myself in the eye putting in the antibiotics).  I’ve kept myself busy since with my eyes closed, listening to music and counting the fibers in this pillow tactile-ly.  1,364 in the first row if you’re that curious.

Once again I’ve woken at precisely midnight.  It’s a pattern that seems to grow heavier, more haunting with each passing night.  Not so much that it’s AT THAT TIME, or that it’s me waking up as opposed to Tom, or even that I’m waking up (which implies that I’ve been sleeping), or how I’ve woken up- as if someone (many someones?) stood over me, clamoring for my attention, only to vanish when I open my eyes.  It’s all these things together, and nights in a row.

It’s as if Tom tries to get a night’s sleep, but Someone (possibly multiple Someones) decides each night, at that nexus point where one day dies and the new one resurrects, that it’s time to RESET and yank me out of whatever floaty black gas chamber they keep me in when I’m not here in this body.  For what reason, I can’t begin to guess.  I MUST know who is running this thing.  Their patterns are showing.  It seems… intentional.  I have to get to the bottom of this.

Other mysteries abound.  Yesterday Mia noticed a loud noise downstairs the same time I did.  Nobody else home.  So it’s not just me.  This house seems to be coming alive.

The odder thing is that our neighbors in the next duplex over on the left are moving out.  Both families, on both ends of THAT duplex.  I can’t even say if there’s been anyone living in the duplex on the right.  Must investigate.  It seems as though everyone’s getting antsy, instinctually taking off in avoidance of some big… Thing.  Or maybe it’s just my paranoia.

It IS nice that we have less and less neighbors nowadays, though.  Less people to hear the-
Hmph.
Loud music that we might decide…
to play.
Or something.

I’m too awake.  Gotta go clean the house.  Already it’s getting disorganized again.  I’m almost glad.  It gives me something to do at night, feels like some kind of a purpose.  I’ve given up on looking for the purpose that may have brought me here, if there’s one thing this life is teaching me, it’s that we should decide our own damn purpose.  I can’t say that I want my life to REVOLVE around this cleaning thing, but I can say that I feel calmer when I purge the filth from this house.  It makes me feel in control somehow.  A zen meditation of sorts.

It can’t hurt, anyway.

Dear Die-ary,

Must posit a small entry.  Could have sworn there were people downstairs talking who woke me up on the couch, but when I opened my eyes they were gone.  Looked at the clock and it was precisely midnight.  That’s always a weird feeling.  Came upstairs, the others were out on the porch having a smoke.  I interrogated them about it and nobody had been down there…

Strange house we live in.

5:23am

Dear god.  Stomach cramps.  Terrible terrible stomach cramps.

Hot tea and a Back to the Future marathon on the couch for me. Wanted to go out early this morning and use the internet, but seeing as it’s difficult to walk without being doubled over in agony, I’ll use the rest time.  At least we don’t return to work until Monday.

WHY DO I HAVE TO BE HERE FOR THIS ONE?

10:18

Pain meds knocked me out.  I’ve missed a good portion of the first movie.  Booh.  Damn, so much blood.  Bad blood.  Weak and nauseous…

This is a part of this life I never wanted any part of, didn’t even necessarily want to write about.  But, here I am.  I don’t trust a body that can bleed a week out of every month and live to tell the tale.  Sheer mutiny.  Some kind of black magic must run these things and it makes me uneasy to inhabit such a homunculus.  At any rate it’s a massive oversight on the part of whoever set this up.  How is this remotely evolutionarily advantageous? So many predators make their living on tracking the scent of blood.  Being vulnerable to that a good quarter of their time, how the species survived the Stone Age is a mystery that is beyond me.

Ugh.  Happier speculations must come to me.  At least nobody’s up to make this morning even more unbearable.  AND I HAVE MR. TINY COMPOOPER BACK!  NO MORE TROMPING DOWN TO THE LIVING ROOM IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT FOR WRITING!!!  Ah glorious contemplation in the peace of my own room with a nice locked door and no disturbances.  Typing when I want, where I want, it’s a luxury I took all too easily for granted.

Time to put on Back to the Future II.  A grin through the stabbing pain.

10:50am

Now a question of personal abuse.  Do I hold this rotten blood against my skin in the most unsanitary squelchy of manners or do I violate myself with a phallic cotton ball?

Dear Die-ary,

That was interesting.

I feel like someone is playing ping-pong with my mind.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  Which player will miss?  When do I ricochet off the table, onto the floor, under the couch where no one will find me and they’ll give up playing with me and go get another ball to toy with?

This is a silly analogy.  Maybe I shouldn’t write so much.

3:32pm

Pissed off.  Managed to leave the flash drive at the Job Connection.  Had to leave the library to go get it.  Couldn’t check back into the library for computer use a second time today.  Can’t put up any entries.  Backed up.

Now going to go find the first middle school cheerleading squad I see and save them from their terrible fates by removing their legs.  (I kid.  I actually couldn’t care less about their fates.)

Gotta relax, everything’s going to be okay.  Mia’s going to be back with the computer late tonight and all of this hassle will be over.  Gotta just… wait it out.

Dear Die-ary,

I know, I know.  Such an ugly entry last night.  But don’t look so traumatized, little Die-ary.  You knew the dangers of the job when you took it.  Besides, if I hadn’t forced myself to purge all those nasty things, maybe I wouldn’t feel so much better today.

Of course the conversation last night couldn’t have hurt.  Names have been omitted to protect the not-so-innocent, but a good jolly bout of speculation on methods of murder, suicide, the whole arena of Wal-Mart bombings and the like- well, it really snapped me back into feeling a bit more like my old self.  The Grin returned, if only for a few hours.  No more self-pity and depressive prose for me, no sir.

I expect it will be a battle like this for the rest of my life- fall down the Well, find in the shadows and muck at the bottom what makes me smile, and use it to claw my way back up.  There will be days where I see sunlight, and maybe even days where I can poke my head out and feel the breeze on my face, but I don’t expect I shall ever fully escape from this Well.  The walls are too slippery and steep, and just when you think you’re almost out, the edges crumble.  And call me crazy, but… it seems to get a bit deeper each time.

Well.  This entry wasn’t SUPPOSED to be depressive.  The point is, I’m near to the top and that’s a good place to be.

In other news, my esteemed and hideous roomies have left me in the lurch for paying the Amerigas and PG&E bill, and auto insurance came in and informed me that the due date was the 18th.  Now I don’t have a free cent in the bank due to covering everyone ELSE’S asses, and auto insurance has lapsed and they’ll probably slap on a late fee now, too.  It feels strange to handle someone else’s finances- will I be held responsible if I fuck something up?  Of course.  I’ll also be held responsible if I don’t do anything.  But that’s what comes with being a Groundskeeper.  The drudge gets easier as time wears on.  Is this life becoming mine?  Refuse to think about everything THAT entails.

In the spirit of responsibility, then, I will throttle every one of these roomies until they cough up the money that is rightfully ours.

5:28pm

I must be a fucking masochist.

I really should stop letting you into my life.  Maybe I just like being around you.  Maybe we have really good conversations, and you make me laugh.  Maybe I’m holding out some kind of terribly idiotic hopes despite all logic to the contrary.  Maybe I just like torturing myself.  Maybe I really AM suicidal- god knows it’s what killed me last time.  Maybe I’m just hoping putting myself in this situation over and over again finally WILL obliterate what’s left of my soul.  All I know for a fact is, none of it makes sense.

I DO like you.  The feelings weren’t supposed to come back, though.  I was supposed to feel nothing.  I thought maybe I could have you around for enjoyment and entertainment.  And as the afternoon wore on and I sat near you where you lay on my living room floor, the stupid idiotic compulsion returned- I just wanted to reach out and touch.

I felt myself stretched over that line again, with half of me screaming to get away, scrambling into an empty corner, knowing that it could only end in tears- no chance for ugly associations in a chosen isolation.  The other half was begging to let go of the fears, begging to give in to one simple joy, pulling towards you, ripping me apart at the chest.  I could barely breathe.  I don’t know which way is up.  Maybe there is no up.  Maybe this is on a left-right axis, in a clearing surrounded by forest fire, and no matter which way I choose I’m going to get burned.

And of course I gave in, and I held you, and I felt the tension in my body taking full minutes to leak away until the demanding, shaming voices in my mind finally shut up and I was at peace and a little smile even came over my face.  Time faded away, everything faded away, and once again I knew what peace was, and it felt like damned choirs of angels singing.

Only my fear of when it would end hung over my head.  I was afraid to move, as if the movement would remind you that spacetime applied and it was time for you to leave, and so I rested still as a stone for fear of breaking the spell, zapping us back out of that tiny peaceful pocket outside of the universe.  I knew at some point I’d have to let you go and everything would come back and my whole body would be wracked with that empty longing pain again, but in that moment- it was all worth it.

It’s really not worth it right now, but it was then.

And when your phone went off, my stomach seized and an adrenaline rush came over me and I truly, TRULY hated, for an incomprehensible moment, whoever it was that was taking you away from me, and was damn ready to fight for you- but NO, I brought everything under control and, every muscle tense, withdrew and scrambled away and wrapped my arms around my knees and forced myself to sit still in a very, very solid attempt, I must say, at pretending that everything was okay.  I still felt dreamy, and it must have been written on my face, and I wasn’t ready yet to come out of that bubble and face the future, so when you asked if it was going to make things harder, it was easy to say no.

I stood and gave you a goodbye hug and tried not to let my feelers rip out through my chest and sink into you again, and when we broke I looked to my left, at the floor, refusing the option for eye contact, knowing removing that possibility from the equation would make things easier for both of us.  It was a mercy.  It took a lot of willpower on my part- the possibilities that could have been opened by looking into your eyes led to everything that my subconscious is screaming for.  I wouldn’t allow it, I will starve it until it gives up and dies.

It must have a lot of strength left in it, though, from the racket it’s making.  That’s what I get for being a fucking idiot and feeding the damn thing again.  Scraps- I throw it scraps because the howling gets unbearable at night and somehow I think it might shut up if I satisfy it for five minutes, but it only whets the damned thing’s appetite, and there’s nowhere I can go now to escape the screaming.  If only I could sink a knife deep into its chest, but no- the only way to kill it must be to starve it.  The pitiable faces it makes from behind its bars, the howls that warble from behind tear drenched eyes-

Fuck.  I need to get out of this room.

7:17pm

FUCKING CHERRY ICEE TIME!!!!

I refuse to even look at what I wrote up there, I’ve very much hit the bottom and rebounded to the top with a magical force equal to the power of the SUN (or something very like it)!  I’m in a very extraordinarily good mood and I know for a FACT that this stupid little infatuation is a blip on the radar of my HOMYGOD SO FUCKING HAPPY CAN’T SIT STILL AND WRITE BYE-BYE!!

Dear Die-ary,

First principles.  Of each thing, ask what is it in itself?

I’ve been examining my growing fixation with cleaning.  Obviously I don’t LIKE cleaning. It’s not a particularly pleasurable hobby- it leaves a grimy coating on your hands, and it makes you smell funny.  I take a lot more showers these days.  So what needs am I satisfying with this?

There are two options- clean, or live in filth.  One must choose what they consider to be the lesser of the two evils in any situation.  For those who came before me, cleaning was obviously more detestable than dirtiness, and so they just dealt with the rubbish.  But for me it’s reversed; the lesser of the two evils is undeniably to put on the rubber gloves and scrub.

My first principle, then, must be to purge uncleanliness.  Echoes of that old dream come back- am I really a “flusher”?

I only know one thing-

I HATE FILTH.

7:39pm

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Eight days it’s been, EIGHT DAYS I’ve been some semblance of myself, some kind of happy, or at least not pitiably depressed.  True I’ve had my ups and downs but it’s par for the course and overall I’ve maintained a fairly steady outlook of goodwill.  Today I’ve dropped away into another deep, dark well.  Obviously, I’ve crawled back up far enough to write.  It only took me four fucking hours.

I lay on the couch this afternoon, in and out of a fuzzy black sleep, faced when awake with all the ugly demons I’ve been looking decidedly away from all this time, feeling to be in a fever dream.  I HATE being like this.  Steeped in a depression, without even the energy to keep my eyes forced open and towards the T.V. screen- it reeks of everything I can’t stand about this body, this System.

Why is it that, here, when I hit a downer, this brain interprets it as shutdown time- SLEEP?  The black tentacles of slumber wrap around my body, slither into my ear and envelop my brain with injected neurotoxins, drag my eyelids down, force their suckers down my throat and intercept the oxygen before it has the chance to fuel me.  I can’t move my limbs- its sick twisting grasp in my mind bringing those insidiously common hallucinations that the insipid call DREAMS.  I feel that I am dying in Sleep’s grasp.  Hypnos doesn’t look like a cute, fuzzy, mutilated stuffed monkey anymore.

And yet the waking world doesn’t look much less grim.  I try to find a reason to get off the couch.  The house is already clean (and if I thought cleaning was my sole purpose for living, that’s reason enough to kill myself right here right now).  There’s not a person in the world I’d leave this house for, not a thing in this county I can think of to do, not a cent in the bank, not a drop of gas in the tank that isn’t pre-allocated.  No portable computer.  The only online access in this county is at the library which is closed on Sundays.  Even writing, in that state, seemed that it would take too much energy.  Couldn’t think of anything I wanted to draw.  Didn’t want to play any video games.  Can’t go terrorize the Wal-Mart.

I couldn’t think of ANYTHING that I wanted to do, no hobbies to take up.  I have no passion, no desire for anything in life.  This is what I’ve been afraid of all week.  I’m hollow.

Then my mind runs to the petty pleasures, some little burst of dopamine that might make life seem worth living, even for a minute.  Food.  Even smoking.  Maybe alcohol.  The knife upstairs, buried in my wrist in some childish display.  Or some kind of sex.  My stomach turns at the thought of all of it.  There’s nothing I want.

Already I’ve eaten too much candy today.  I’ve been binging.  I know a lot of food has gone into this body this week because the bones in these wrists are disappearing again.  It’s been taking the place of a hobby, one of the only forms of stimulation I haven’t found to be utterly detestable, and it’s growing ugly to me fast.

And, of course, with this lack of defenses, my mental immune system compromised, so to speak, the Black Hole is gone.  When I say that, I mean that comforting inability to feel when I think of you.  When you intrude in my head, a rapidfire attack-

(a scream echoing) “PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD CAN’T I JUST-”
I grip the pillow- knitted brow
chest-stab
A maelstrom, your face, the feel of your arms, ecstatic poison ripping through my skin
“I WAS SO CLOSE TO KNOWING WHAT IT-”
NO   NO   NO   SHUT IT OFF
FOR FUCK’S
SAKE
SHUT IT DOWN
Lips, touch, that reverberating sublime peace twisting into a screaming unfulfilled promise
A thorn, an infection, cut it out, too late, it’s gone septic
“PLEASE WON’T YOU JUST LET ME-”
Fantasy, desire, fever, nausea, scream, I -WILL- CUT YOU OUT OF ME
-SHUT
-IT
-DOWN
…-silence-

You’ve been popping into my head with alarming frequency.

When does this go away?

I wasn’t supposed to be able to have feelings like this, not this time!  The weakness that brought this insanity on…  It’s unbearable.  Where’s a friendly gun when you need one?

Dear Die-ary.

Silence before the storm.

Come to think of it, maybe just silence.  Really not used to that.

It’s been a bit of a boring last week, hasn’t it?  A few paranoid delusions, some interesting dreams, nothing to get up in arms about.  One might say that’s kind of nice.  One might say living a boring life isn’t necessarily a fate worse than death.  But that’s the kind of attitude that comes before the coma takes you and you become one of those zombies in sweatpants you see walking the grocery stores.

It was a grocery store that brought on this paranoid melancholy.  One of those huge banners hanging from the ceiling; it spelled out “l i f e” with pictures of fresh cut fruit, children playing and laughing: a white-picket-fence kind of idyllia.  I caught myself in a reflection staring at it with the most hollow and upset of looks.  Probably a rare occasion one would catch me with that Particular Look on my face- a real sort of desperate sadness tinged with bitterness, incredulosity, and- casting distortion over all else- that panicked claustrophobic bent around the edges of the eyes, indicative of an impending Fate.  A strange combination to be sure.  My awareness kicked into overdrive for a second outside spacetime- my breathing was heavy, my pulse sounded slow and atomic- a Doomsday clock.

I can’t say that modern commercialism has ever, in one instance, actually driven me so close to the edge of suicide.

Is this really what we’re supposed to want out of this life?  Norman Rockwell?  To grow up and become soccer moms and Disneyland daddies?  Nice curtains that don’t clash with the potholders, frequent flier miles, a healthy vegan diet complete with bean sprouts and  yoga, good auto insurance, a clean divorce settlement, Club Cards?  The stereotypically sunny banner suggested a sort of bland contentment.  It shook me to the core.  It proclaimed harshly, “THIS IS IT!!! EVERYTHING THERE IS TO LIFE, EVERYTHING YOU’LL EVER NEED, IT’S ALL RIGHT HERE IF ONLY YOU GIVE IN TO IT, and you can buy it only at Safeway.”  It terrifies me, to think that they may be telling the truth- that the only real things in life are the grains of dull pride and joy picked from getting your Amerigas bill paid on time.

What if I don’t want what you’ve been pushing?

What if everything I want out of life starkly contrasts with everything you’ve been training us to try and achieve since kindergarten?  What if my life plans, my hopes and dreams and aspirations, don’t fit in with the bars you’ve imposed on this sick world?  What if it’s completely unacceptable?  What if the path I want to run is away from the herd, in the tall grass, beyond the yellow police lines?

I might die out there- MAYBE.  You’re here to protect the common citizens, you calmly state from within your hazmat suit- MAYBE.  Maybe if you hadn’t made it so offlimits, maybe if you hadn’t made MY LIFE an abomination by your arbitrary standards, it WOULDN’T be so dangerous.  Maybe if you were really trying to protect me, the little red dots wouldn’t be swarming the left side of my chest, NOW WOULD THEY??!

I feel the eyes on me, ever watching, waiting for me to slip up, to step out of Purgatory- to come out of private life and resume the Old Ways- or maybe just to give up, give in, crack and pursue that law degree in braindead hopes of one day achieving the ultimate goal- a REALLY FUCKING NICE CAR.

I can’t walk this line forever.  Something’s gotta give.

I walk the petty fringe, art school, pursuant of a career that might let me stay a little weirder, might not force me to hack and slash off all the limbs that don’t fit the cookie cutter holes just in order to survive.  I know I’m a monster.  But here’s the difference.  I know what I am, and I’m comfortable with it, and I will not be shamed into becoming a one-headed, two-armed, two-legged humanoid if that’s not what I’m meant to be.  Maybe this is a foolish young man’s game, but I’m still young, and I’m game.  There MUST be a place for people like me in a world like this, and if there is breath in my lungs I won’t stop looking for it.

This is Monster Pride.