An addiction to a lifestyle. An addiction to something that holds little intrigue and beauty. An addiction to something that is pitied and spat upon by it’s curator. A reluctance to fulfill a desire to become something more than what you are right now. Adolescent tendencies bleeding into adulthood slowly invalidating the belief that you are an adult. Having chicken noodle soup and remembering how sick you used to get. Having a Fresca and remembering the way you used to love not being home.
You do that to yourself, don’t you? Struggling to allow something good to remain good without filling the empty spaces with something bad. You loved the East Coast. You loved the idea of forgetting your own bed for an extended period of time. You loved being away from your familiarity and finding a temporary sense of it in a much different place. But that can’t happen now. You won’t allow that to happen. You’ve become far more stubborn than you wished you’d become.
Why have you become so angry? You’re so fucking angry with the world, but you weren’t always this way. You want to accept the fault entirely as your own, you always have, but you know that’s not how this all works. You’re having a hard time now. Trying to rationalize with yourself that it’s okay to be upset about something and find it unfair while simultaneously acknowledging your privilege and position of inherent comfort. A complaint of that nature will never be found, and you’ve come to set that boundary rather determinedly. But that does not mean you have to terrorize yourself about what could have been done differently. You can cry over spilled milk, no one is telling you that you can’t, but please allow yourself the capacity to accept that you might not have been the one who knocked the glass over.
I need a cigarette.
A child lopping off the heads of the petunias in your dad’s garden. You always were the destructive sort. You told your mom you hated her because she asked you to come back home from the park. You stopped crying almost entirely, but you broke down when you heard the news in April. It didn’t happen right away, you didn’t really feel anything at first. But you sat with it, and you sat with yourself, and you looked at who you were in her eyes, and you realized you wish you had been different. Not in the usual way you see it, not in the way that you wish you were a different person for your own gain. You wish you were a different person for her. You wish you were a better son, and you don’t know if you’ll ever be able to forgive yourself for that.
Stomachache worrywart, your calm is far from reach. There’s a frustration that has been built up because of this circumstance, and a guilt has come along with it. And under a long built mass of miserable detritus you lie, wishing to remain there, tired of the attempts of others to remove the rubble. Exhaustion upon exhaustion upon exhaustion. To be left alone; unperturbed, that is all you wish. The extent of your desire reaches no further than an unbroken quiet. You used to welcome the idea of a stranger becoming an acquaintance, but you’ve lost that almost entirely. You find yourself annoyed at the bureaucracy of social interactions with strangers.
Your incessant avoidance towards the idea of being someone of note. There’s a presumption in there that you cannot be important to another. You cannot be relied upon. You cannot be a confidant. You cannot be anything more than what you are. This gaping chasm of self-confidence has become a means of destroying any hope or expectation someone may place in you. You struggle to keep enough energy to make it through the day without overwhelming self-pity. Where could you possibly find the energy to maintain a relationship, platonic or otherwise? There comes an expectation of the person you are in a relationship, what you are or what you bring to that circumstance, and therein lies the problem. You’ve never really given yourself the chance to reach for something greater than yourself. Although you believe yourself to be below most things, so perhaps that’s all you’ve ever done.
You give up so easily. Tell me with a straight face that you have ever truly faced a challenge successfully. You told your mom, “If I don’t try, I can’t ever hurt myself.” What a stupid fucking misguided way to think. You’ve numbed yourself, numbed yourself, numbed yourself with the idea that pain cannot reach you if you don’t put in the time to succeed. And look where you are now. Would you have failed if you actually stuck with it and tried? Probably. But there’s no way to know that because you can’t even allow yourself the opportunity to fail. Put on a stoic act and tell yourself “what happens, happens,” while you cower at the thought of fucking up after actually trying. Months ago you wrote “I can’t stand to bear witness to my negligence in the face of my self destruction,” and yet, here you stand. Here you have stood.
I made love, I baked a loaf of focaccia, and I read about ancient tragedies. I love lying.
I have been watching this large bird fly through the air for a couple of minutes now. I’m not sure what kind of bird it is. I think some kind of eagle or hawk, but I wish not to make a fool of myself. An Audubon Society member may come across this and point out to me that that bird is native to my locale. I would never want to make an assumption of that magnitude. I will now describe the feathered being to you; large, but not massive, larger than the average finch. Black or at least a dark brown, I think the wingtips are a lighter color, but I haven’t actually been paying as much attention as I had claimed earlier in this writing. It’s about 200 feet in the air, give or take 100 feet, I can’t gauge height very well. It seems to be enjoying itself. It’s rather windy out today, and I keep getting glimpses of the bird just gliding in relatively the same place. Wings spread wide, but no flapping. Just allowing the provided gusts to take it where they may. He, or she, has friends accompanying them now. Perhaps they’re hunting. Perhaps there’s a small creature down on the street, and maybe they’re waiting for the opportunity to strike. Maybe there’s a really large mirror and they are watching their reflections thinking there’s a bunch of smaller birds beneath them, not understanding the perspective change due to distance. What a peculiar bunch of fellows those birds are.
He had a personal conversation with God. They all wanted to know what was said. It was rather quite boring. He asked God who was going to win the World Series.
I have equated you to a ball and chain. I have needlessly besmirched all that you have given me. I have never really considered you a friend. The last however many months have been spent seeking your replacement. Trying to find a better version of you in the hope that I won’t feel so strongly a desire to flee. An overwhelming desire to run away, which comes in waves. More often than not I don’t think about you at all. Going through my days without you crossing my mind is typically when things are going well. The thoughts in which you are present are typically indicative of some mental struggle I am having.
I don’t know that you have truly done anything deserving of this contempt. Some might say so, but I know others find you wonderful, and to them you may honestly be wonderful. But, frankly, I fucking detest you. There is not a single part of you that I enjoy anymore. There were parts of you I loved when I was a younger man, but those have since changed, or been stripped away entirely. The times and places where I find solace are due to the fact that these things are distinctly not you. I have found areas where I can separate myself from you, and they tend to bring me peace, but anymore I find myself needing and requiring more than that peace. And I know that you have given me more than I could have ever asked for, but, I apologize, that was to be expected of you. You introduced me to most of the people I know and call friends, and you were there for me in my absolute worst times. But what have you done for me that you haven’t done for every other version of me out there?
I had plans to leave and completely forget about you, but variables outside of my control have made that an impossibility for the time being. I know these are not variables that you had any control over, but the point remains, you suffocate me. You offer nothing, and yet you are all encompassing. You have scarred me in ways that will never heal. I used to believe I owed you something for being the reason I am the man I am today, but I hate who I am and what I have become at your feet. I don’t know that I ever liked who I was around you. I know when I was younger I did not think about you at all, but the more I grew and the more I saw how other people lived, the more I realized how awful this relationship is.
What hurts the most is knowing that there was a time when I did love you. When I was younger you were so much more accommodating and beautiful. Your colors felt more vivid, your aroma smelled sweeter. But I’ve aged, and so have you. We’ve both grown in ways that have rendered us unrecognizable from what we once were. We’ve both become things that don’t benefit the other. This symbiotic relationship has become parasitic. You used to host me and welcome me and hold me in ways that warmed both of us, but now I can’t help but feel you slowly killing me. I try to tear away, I try to put a distance between us, but still you latch onto me. I can’t fucking get away from you.
I’m not even certain I will be content when I do finally leave you entirely. There have been moments when I find myself away from you, and it’s nice, but it’s only nice temporarily. I have come to value comfort and familiarity so much so that I cannot find a moment of solace in a situation different from the one we have between us. I hate what we are. I hate what we have become and I fear where we are headed, and yet, I can’t find peace elsewhere. It makes me fucking sick. I fear that I will never be able to find serenity in the way I want to. I cannot be certain that others will bring me joy and love, but I know that you cannot, and I don’t wish to search for the ways in which you used to. I think there are more years behind me than lay ahead of me, and I do not wish to spend any more with you. I’m sure you will grow without me here, but I truly don’t care if you collapse entirely.
I tap my head, I scratch my nose, I extend my jaw and pop my ears. I take a sip of my coffee and it doesn’t feel right going down, so I do it all again. I extend my jaw. Nothing. I do it once more. Again, do it again. It doesn’t feel right. And then it does. I look around to see if others are watching. They never are. I take another sip. No problems this time.
Grub's Dirt 