I don’t really want to feel it. I know, I know, we’ve talked about this, but you know how it is.
It’s all locked away. I’m bone tired, I’ve barely had two hours to myself to rub together and spark the neurons in my skull to fire.
I’m exhausted, defeated, and it makes it worse because I can’t stop and let go at all, because I just can’t afford the time it would take to recover. I have to keep limping on until it’s safe. But oh, I’ve got deadlines, a handful of weeks to get everything done.
Sigh.
Two lives. One connected to the greater world, a contributing member to society, giving time and energy and insight so I’m given money for food and a place to sleep and the internet. Service to others, not to myself, although at least in the way I’ve chosen.
And another just for me, languishing in the hours respectable people are asleep.
You can guess which of the two is more important to me, I imagine. I’ve never felt even the slightest twinge of guilt for being selfish.
After all, I’m not asking for any favors, not expecting anything from anyone else as my due. I just want my life.
Sorry. Not important. Flickers of passion, trying to kindle and catch. The embers have cooled too much.
…
It’s cool, and the wind brushing through the blinds is somehow quieter than actual silence. I listen to the cars rushing by outside, and it reminds me of staring out the window in the backseat of my parent’s car.
I rarely felt safe when I was young. Not like I was expecting to get hurt, just… I don’t know, most of the time I wasn’t in school, my dad could always pop up and seize control of my life. I had to be on guard, because at any moment he could come out of nowhere to tell me how pathetic or useless I was, tell me about how stupid whatever I was doing was. School wasn’t really any different, just with kids my own age, but I think most people got some experience with that.
An everyday, common kind of tragedy.
Anyway. It was when we were driving back I was safe. He’d fall asleep, sometimes, or he’d just drive back quietly. It was really the only thing my parents did, drive out to places. Malls an hour away, or a fishing store in Pennsylvania, or some little hole-in-the-wall hardware store that had exactly the part he needed.
I think the only reason I went with them was so I wouldn’t be waiting with dread for them to get back. You’d never be sure what he’d be like when you got back.
Every time I go back I think I’m over it. I think I’ve moved on. I think I’ve dealt with it.
And then even though I haven’t thought about him in months, one night for no reason explaining why the sound of cars passing calms me down leads me back.
Funny thing, you know, the past. How it’s never really gone, it’s always right where you left it. You go all these new, crazy places, find out you’re this whole other person you never knew, and still, there it is, because no matter where you go, it isn’t going anywhere.
…
I don’t want to admit it. I don’t want to say I’m lonely, because then I’ll be everything they say I should be, and I refuse.
It hurts, but it doesn’t hurt because I just need to talk to someone. I spent an hour in the lab today, talking to some lady probably ten years my senior who doesn’t have her bachelor’s degree yet, listening to her justify not going to grad school even though she wants to because she’s too old to do what she wants and she has to support her family and on, and on, and god damnit.
I talk to so many fucking people like this these days. I used to crawl in my little hole and not emerge for weeks, and now I can barely find a full day to myself.
And it does nothing. It’s like dying of thirst and drinking saltwater. These people are fucking poison and I’m so sick and…
And I can’t help it because sometimes it just hurts too fucking much to keep waiting for the right person and I don’t know how else I’m going to get through it, because even if it takes the pressure off for a few minutes maybe I can fucking breathe long enough to get myself back together.
You see? This. This garbage is what I get, for trying new things, for trying to be more normal, for trying to find some common ground with the rest of fucking humanity.
The endless sea of people, all with the same goddamn problems and a pack of really shitty not-quite solutions.
Is this really the best we can do? Is there nothing else?
Something’s missing, so it hurts, and nothing helps, so we do all kinds of stupid shit for momentary relief, making nothing better, placebo pills and bad medicine where the symptoms suck and nothing even treats the disease.
I want it so badly I can taste her, I could swallow her whole, I could amputate my heart if I thought the scent of blood would draw her in just a little bit faster.
I ache and bleed and fester, just like I have for years stacked on years, every day hoping it’ll change, hoping for just something, some development, something new, because for fuck sake it’s just such a boring story.
I could suffer nobly and stoicly though heartbreak, I could tragically trudge through a spiral of self-destruction, I could sacrifice heroically for a love that could never be…
But I’m just so sick, and tired, and bored, of it just. being. nothing.
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