You wanted an update, I needed to vent

I’ve been sitting here for a whiling, pondering what I should put down on this. I haven’t updated in an extremely long time, for a myriad of reasons, but primarily just because I haven’t felt inspired to. I don’t feel particularly inspired now, to be truthful, but I have a inkling that necessity will bridge that gap which is normally filled by inspiration. Another issue is the fact I don’t know what to write. I have a very unstable life and so much has happened and I don’t know how much to bother explaining or how much detail to go into.
I’ve decided, after a bit of thinking, that those most likely to read this, i.e. nobody, myself, my girlfriend, and maybe one or two close friends, know the current state of my life and don’t need a detailed refresher. And as for who else is likely to read this, namely random strangers who stumble across it, probably don’t care enough to read pages of minutiae detailing how I arrived where I’m at.
As such, here’s the basics: I’m unemployed, living by bouncing from friend to friend and living on my air mattress, my car is down for a count for a long while and is back in my father’s yard. My credit score, lack of a finished college education and the economy as a whole have all made it extremely difficult for me to find a job. No matter how many applications I submit, there seems to always be someone better suited for the job than me and the employer either tells me such (which I appreciate) or just never contacts me (which I resent).
So, I am currently living in the dining room of my very gracious friend Eric, who has been very helpful and understanding during this time. He’s helped me look for work and as such knows about the fact that, despite my efforts, I have the hardest time being hired. I often wonder if I’m just not a desireable person overall or if perhaps I’m merely putting the wrong things down on my applications. I don’t have the greatest work history due to the fact I move around a lot, so I can understand that it may look as though I can’t commit to a job, but applications give so very little room to explain such things that I feel slighted by how little of myself is expressed by an application. I should probably just make a resume but that seems a bit futile when I have no access to a printer.
The current plan is that, one Kayla visits and heads back home, I pack up my stuff, have my friend Ben drive me to Virginia, where I shall rendevous with a friend, Kyle, whom I met over Xbox Live and who has offered me a place to stay with him and his family in Pennsylvannia. He assures me that they can find me a job up there and that, so long as I do my part around the house and cook dinner when the parents are unable to do so, I can keep my paychecks and save them up for when Kayla and I are hopefully able to get our own place next summer.
Kayla shall be visiting in a little under two weeks, so hopefully in a little over three weeks, I should be leaving the godforsaken Carolinas for the rest of my life.
It’s not until recently that I realized some things about myself. One is that I really do hate the South. I think the only think I do not hate about the South is the food. Everything else…the ignorance, the misguided priorities, the omnidirectional racism, the hypocrisy, the accents, the heat, the selection of overly loud cultures…it all just grates on me and puts me in a bad mood when I have to be engulfed in it. This may be the reason why I am in such a touchy, aggressive mood so often down here, particularly in Florence, which is a place of seeming magetism for the very stereotypical culture drones that piss me off the most. All the ghetto bangers, Good Ol’ Boys, scene kids, and overly competitive pseudo intellectuals just seem to congregate in Florence and my only recourse to avoid them is to stay inside, at which point I get cabin fever and my restlessness puts me in the same overly edgy mood I was trying to avoid in the first place. I can’t even escape into music or movies properly because Eric, living in a town home, has thin walls and easily offended neighbors, limiting the volume at which I can listen to and, by virtue of therapy, sing along with my music.
I do feel incredible lucky that the one aspect of my life that always calms me down and never fails to put a smile on my face is talking to Kayla. True, my efforts to make contact with her every day, whether dealing with the library’s stuffy atmosphere or traipsing around the property here grasping for some vestige of a neighbor’s wireless signal for Eric’s laptop to latch onto, cause more frustration than anything else sometimes, but it’s worth it to talk to her. It wasn’t so bad when I had my phone, but ever since Virgin Mobile decided they couldn’t stop sniffing their shit-covered thumbs long enough to transfer my service correctly I haven’t been able to call her and hear her voice, so the internet is my only recourse for my best therapy. I guess to some extent it’s a testament of how much she means to me and how much I appreciate the love we share. She never fails to bring a smile to my face, no matter how short our chance to talk.
Lately I’ve noticed that my social anxiety has gotten worse. Maybe it’s having spent so much time alone and away from a campus atmosphere, but I only seem to level out when I either alone or with only one other person. It reached a new high at the apartment, where, apparently, I lost nearly 2 weeks of my life and I don’t remember it. I thought I’d only been in Florence for 2 weeks, but Eric told me I’d been here for a month by that point and I honestly could not remember being here that long. He says I’d been at the apartment nearly the entire time and I don’t remember that. It frightens me that something like that could happen and I not remember it. I hate not being in control of my actions.
Normally in a crowd, I get nervous and either withdraw into myself or become manic and try and try to befriend everyone to an embarassing extent, which is why I generally stay alone. Except, whether cruelly or ironically I can’t decide, I get lonely very easily. It’s a frustrating catch-22 that I strive for social interaction, and yet that very social interaction stresses me so much that I am not myself. I really do feel as if I’m a completely different person sometimes when I’m in a group of people. But what happened at the apartment…it’s different. It’s as if I’d withdrawn into that environment to the point of excluding the part of myself that has become as a result of living alone for most of my life. Something similar happened during the time I was dating Michelle, but even then I was able to see myself from the outside and understand I was acting irrationally, even if I felt seemingly helpless to stop it. But this time…I don’t remember it at all. I remember bits and pieces, but Eric says I was over there for a week straight at one point and I just have no recollection being there for that long.
It’s possible that the shift in sleep schedules just caused a memory lapse along with the stress of meeting so many new people. That’s what Eric thinks and I really hope he’s right. It really scares me to think that there’s something deeper, more permanent at work. My mind is the only thing I can always call mine and that cannot be taken away from me; when I have nothing else, I will always at least have the sanctity of my mind. But if my mind is not reliable and is no longer the wall I have come to see it as…what do I have left when the world has taken so much else away from me? Even now, I’m not nearly as articulate and eloquent as I normally am when writing to nobody in particular. My heart is beating erratically and my thoughts flicker like film strips spliced in haste by a haggard blind man. I find it hard to concentrate when I think back on how embarrassed I am at myself for allowing a fugue state to overcome the part of myself that I consider nigh-unbreakable. My mind bends and flexes and strains with the effort of life, but never has it broken. But my time in Florence has shown me that the first stress fractures are beginning to come out of the shadows. How much more can my mind bend before it breaks? And if it ever does, can the pieces be reassembled into a still cohesive whole or will the self I know today forever cease to be, merely to be replaced by a cracked and cratered shell of what once was and what once could have been.
There are times when I can envision something so completely that it overshadows the physical world that I am looking at. I guess you could call it my over-vivid imagination, but sometimes I see scenarios, hypotheticals that could be real but aren’t. I see them as if they were true as day unfolding right in front of me. A hypothetical involving me hitchhiking the side of the road on a cloudy day, poised with my thumb up beside some massive 8-lane roadway, a pack upon my shoulders and cars wizzing by. A new scenario where I’m sitting in the living room of the apartment, thanking everyone there for being so nice to me and explaining my oddities and eccentricies to them so that they might better understand me. Seeing my father get a phone call from the police as they tell him I’ve been in a traffic accident. Were I asleep, these would merely be cast aside as dreams.
But I am not asleep. I am most often walking or observing a group of people I know while they’re talking. Often times, in situations where I’m already around people, the ‘dream’ is very similar to what I’m actually seeing, but instead the topic is something different and the conversation takes a different set of turns. It very well could be real, if only for the fact that I can look through this daydream and see the real world as easily as one shifts their depth of focus to look through painted glass. It’s as though a translucent movie screen is pulled over my eyes and across that screen plays things that could happen or might happen or I wish could have happened and if I’m not careful, I’ll forget that what I’m seeing isn’t real, but merely an imagined alternate reality acting as an accessory to the real one in which I live.
Maybe I’m making this out as more than it is. Maybe it seems more severe than it is because I’m the one experiencing it and I don’t understand it. It’s not extremely common; it only occurs when I extremely stressed about a specific topic or subject of my life. Maybe, like my nervousness in a crowd, it’s merely a new coping mechanism. It’s a small price to pay for overall stability in my daily lives. I guess a 5-minute break from reality is better than a complete and total mental breakdown, but I still don’t like the uncertainty that comes with it. I like to aware of my surroundings and in complete control of my actions and far too often I don’t feel like I am either of those things.
Of course, that seems to be the overall theme of my life at the moment: no control. I’m having to rely on the whims of the world and the convictions of those around me to help me through this. I hate depending on others for anything and now I’m stuck unable to take any other recourse. It’s maddening and humiliating. I’m strong, I’m smart, I’m perceptive, physically fit and mentally acute and yet I’m living in a goddamned dining room, walking to the library to use the internet and picking up loose change out of the gutter at every chance so that I can eat something other than ramen or rice. Maybe I’m supposed to get something out of this like humility or grace or a smaller waistline but lately the thing I’ve been gaining the most is the seething, writhing, barely contained rage at the world around me and the circumstances that put me here. I feel as though I could snap at any moment and break down a brick wall with all this resentment. I have to think of the possibilities of the future if I can only make it through this in order to calm my nerves. Eric has no idea how difficult it was for my not to hit Charles when I asked to talk to him and he blew me off. It’s not small thing for me to confide in a male and to be blown off when I open myself up to that kind of vulnerability…it’s an insult I do not lightly forgive…or forget. Maybe it’s merely bad luck on our parts that I am having all this thrown at me at once and I guess it has taught me better control over my anger than I ever previously had, but luck, by virtue of being luck, should not be consistent and if there’s one thing in my life that has been consistent, it has been bad luck.
At least I finally feel the inspiration to draw and write poetry and songs again. Ever since I’ve left Winthrop, my passion to create has been a withered, dead and dusty thing and finally, finally when nothing else in the world is thriving, my passion to release and create blooms forth, red and reeking with the rage of a slave to bad luck and a world that perpetuates darkly skewed chaos.
…I miss Kayla.
It always comes back to that. No matter how bad things seem to be or how bleak the outlook of my future appears to be, all I have to do is think of Kayla and I get this odd surge of confidence that if I can only be patient and survive, things will work out so long as she’s by my side; or, since she’s taller than me, I’m by her side. For some reason, she seems to be the only person capable to counteracting my bad luck because when I’m with her, nothing ever goes horribly wrong. The little things that do go wrong may seem severe to some, but in comparison to the disasters I’ve grown accustomed to, they’re all roses to me. Two weeks…


…also…I want to start a band.



“Distrust to Relent” (By myself)

Let’s not worsen these inward wounds
Bleeding, blacked out, emotions choking
Back the epitaphs of our bonded tombs.
You claim ‘never intending, always not knowing’,
The pain released by all your smiles, eyes untrue.

Fickle loyalties dancing back and forth
Movements graceful in their treachery.
Betrayal never known to taste more
Rich in tears falling so heavily.

Relent before we make you repent.
Relent before we make you repent.
Relent as we see you repent.
Repent. Repent. Repent.

Rediscover the beauty you destroyed in haste
Hold her hands and gasp inward
When bones break and you finally get a taste
Of a broken bond of trust delivered
In a loved one’s smiling crushing dying embrace.

Kneeling and crying, asking forgiveness
Your words still drip and dangle feeling distrustful
Saying anything in order to end this
All you know is winking greedy, you wake up lustful.
Your manipulations persistent, endless.

Relent before we make you repent.
Relent before we make you repent.
Relent as we see you repent.
Repent. Repent. Repent. Re-

Pent up aggressions seething and writhing
The pack turns inward holding you without dispute
Accountable for pains born from sanguine lying.
Weaken bonds break and friends turn against you
Ripping and tearing, their words snapping and biting.

Sitting there wounded, staring disbelieving
As your tools twist, and turn and easily trample
That which you thought incapable of leaving.
Head held in your hands, an unstable example
Of the chaos twisted hands wind up often wreaking.

Relent before we make you repent.
Relent as we see you re-

Pent up aggressions seething and writhing,
Sitting wounded, staring with resentment
Your mouth locked, discontinued guising,
Instead of repented you are forced relented.

Repent while we make you relent.
Repent as we make you relent.
Relent. Repent. Repent. Repent.

Repent.

Life, and Death, are what you make them.

To preface, I wrote this while drunk and low on sleep, so take it for what it is: a drunken ramble by a sleepless mind.

Have you ever stared at your feet as you walked down a straight street and pictured that instead of you walking along the Earth that the Earth was rotating beneath your feet and that you are, in fact, not moving at all? A stationary circus performer atop the largest balance ball imaginable.

The Earth moves. As does Time. Our lives move along with them, but in contrast to their cosmic consistency, our lives and the forces exerted therein are merely grains of sand stubbornly sticking to the side of an hourglass; refusing to smoothly follow the progress of the tide of sand. We are insignificant to the cycle of existence and no amount of political influence or wealth can change the fact that the Earth and Time just do not care. They don’t even notice.

Our gravest crises do not even merit an annoyed swat. If the individual and all the individual’s efforts are so unspectacular, then what is the point of living? What is the point of an existence that does not affect? For what purpose do we arise out of bed, aside from the instinct to live long enough to sleep again?

Knowledge. Experience.

Living.

The secret of living is not to attain some approval from some great cosmic creator for admittance into some other rumored superior form of existence. No. If that were true, then Death as we view it would not exist and live would truly have no purpose. The secret purpose of Life is merely to live. We exist solely to experience things for ourselves and grow to appreciate the beauty of those instances as the miracles they are. As I age, as you age, as we all age we experience things that no other person has or ever will experience. Even if they were there when the action or event happened, they still do not share your exact experience because they are not you; they do not have your insight and your exact appreciation and interpretation of what happens and has happened.

We are all great tomes of knowledge and each day is a new page. Is minute is a new page. Each second, each blink of an eye, is a new page. As far as Time is concerned, there is no length minimum or maximum for a page in the book of Life. Time only exists when laid alongside life; Time has no measure for the living. Time is relative because Life is relative to the one living it. A year to me is not the same as a year to you and the reason is as simple as the fact that I am not you. We both view Time differently and because we perceive Time differently, Time actuality is different for each of us. My minute is not your minute. While the clock between may beg to differ, it does not know my appreciation of a minute versus yours. Time exists only in the manner in which we perceive it. Time does not exist for a rock or a leaf or a field mouse. They do not perceive Time; the previous and impending are not concepts they can fathom and as such past and future do not exist for them. Most creatures only perceive the now and time as we conceive it literally does not affect them.

Time is a creation of sentience.

Existence is a creation of sentience.

The only creature who can know the concept of Existence is one that can conceptualize the assumed reality of its own Existence. To any other creature, they merely are; being ‘not’ isn’t even an option to them because they cannot perceive the idea. That previously mentioned field mouse? It doesn’t know what Death is. It does not know that force which it fears. It only knows fear of something unknown; something beyond it.

We are still field mice as far as the universe is concerned. We fear Death because we do not know what it is; and because we do not know what Death is and admit that we fear it because so, we are the laughing stock of the universe.

What worries me isn’t the unknown aspect of Death. Honestly, it’s the unknown aspect of Death that draws me toward it. It ignites my curiosity. Just what is on the other side? I am at times obsessed with the thought. Were there some way I could ensure my safe return, I would zealously plunge into Death if only to find out just what Death actually entails. I would love to experience Death if only I were able to retain the knowledge of that experience. But I don’t have any assurance of being able to keep that knowledge and as such, I am compelled to keep Death at bay until I feel I’ve experienced enough of Living that I’ll be satisfied with the possibility of experiencing no more.

It’s not the unknown of Death that scares me; it’s the possibility of losing the knowledge I have gained, that I have earned by warding off Death long enough to wake up again and again. I do not want to lose love. I do not want to lose happiness. I do not want to even lose sadness, because it is the bitterness of sadness that makes happiness so sweet. When we die, what happens to all that knowledge? All those unique perceptions of personal existence…do they merely disappear? Do they go to waste?

Is that what a soul is? The stockpile of experience we gain through living? Is a soul merely a hope chest stuffed to the brim with memories? Is the reason that humanity created the concept of a soul because of our fear of our memories going to waste? Because if our memories will do naught but cease to be when our bodies do, what’s the point?

The point is to ignore the point. The point is to just live and let your memories take care of themselves. We cannot change the inevitable nature of Death and we must all find out the truth behind Death, whether we want to or not. If we fear the end of Time, then it is our own fault when that end draws near far too quickly for our tastes. We created Time and as such we control Time. Time exists only as the individual perceives it. The fact that we’ve all agreed to a standardization of Time is merely a testament to our insistence to conform. If man had not invented ways to try and measure Time, then Time would not exist. Time is a measurement of Existence. And if Time is merely a perception of Existence and Time only exists as we perceive it, then we exist only as we perceive we do.

“I think, therefore I am.”

As such, one can change their existence merely by altering their perception of their existence. If I can make a minute feel longer than the stopwatch insists it is, then why can’t I perceive my Existence to be far more significant than the Universe insists it is? Who ever set the Universe’s perception of Existence as the norm by which all shall be compared? And if our Existences are not affected by the perceived Existence of the Universe, then who can prove the Existence of the Universe at all? The only reason we think the Universe exists is because we need a context within which to place our own Existences.

Want context? Fine.

The Existence of the individual is dictated by the individual’s perception of that Existence.

Without the perception of Existence, there can be no Existence.

If the individual only exists because they agree to perceive that Existence as so, then they, in perceiving, and thus creating, their own Existence is their own Universe.

If Life is merely a collection of experiences and experience is a by-product of perceived Existence, then Life exists only because the individual perceives it to exist.

If Life is perceived, and thus created, by the Existence of the individual’s own perception of Existence, then each individual is responsible for creating Life as they perceive it.

If Life is created by the individual, and the individual perceives themselves as Living, then the individual is their own creator.

We are all our own God.

Furthermore, if Life exists only as a perception of the individual, then Death, being the assumed inverse of Life, only exists because the individual chooses to perceive Life as existing. Therefore, like the field mouse, if the individual does not perceive Life as an existing concept, then inversely they do not perceive Death as an existing concept. If the individual does not perceive Death as a concept of Existence, then, to that individual, Death does not. If Death does not exist, then one cannot die.
Now my question is…I’ve been taught to perceive Life and thus to perceive Death. Furthermore, I’ve been led to perceive Death as some sort of end. But is it?

Is it really? Because if Life and Death are only perceptions of the individual, then isn’t it up to the individual what happens when Life becomes Death? An agreed upon concept as proof is not a proof of concept. If so, then is the secret to Immortality as simple as merely negating one’s perception of Life and Death as existing?

Have humans become too smart to live forever?

Furthermore, are we too dumb to alter our own perceptions in order to alter our own existences?

Do we die merely as an after-effect of being in the evolutionary middle years?

If an individual can learn to successfully ignore the concept of Death and eventually forget that they ever perceived the existence of Death…can they die?

I’m sure I lack the capabilities to alter my perceptions enough to answer this query personally…but still the query remains: is the meaning of Life to merely learn to ignore the fact that one is alive and to instead exist without any personal perception of Existence in order to negate the perception of Life and as a result negate the concept of Death, thus negating the Reality of Life and Death at the same time?
Alongside that question, another question arises: Are any of us capable of this feat?

Cut to black after a lot of red

You know...you have to wonder...wouldn't it just be easier being dead?

Echoes rustle in anticipation of the coming silence

I think tonight I finally realized just how goddamned lonely I am...

I see a pretty flower.

Should I be worried that it's now officially spring and I'm still having suicidal thoughts throughout the day?

Goddamned dicks

Rachel got raped and I'm too far away to help...the only thing I could do was talker her through it, convince her to call the cops and get a couple friends to her.

I wish I could be there right now...I really do. I'm so worried about her and I just want to be there for her.

I hate guys. I really really really hate guys. And if I ever see Jesse, I will kill him. Rachel is too sweet a girl for some shit like this.

Claustraphobia...

I can feel the world closing in. The pressure mounting and building. The world wants in.




I want out.