It’s late. It didn’t used to be late, but now it is. My eyes have seen enough for the day. The movie reel of my mind is smacking the end of the tape over and over again against the inside of my forehead. I find myself, per usual, writing because I have to. Because I have words stuffed somewhere in there that have to be coaxed out like a frightened animal. They’re stuck. I’m stuck. And I suppose if you don’t know how to get somewhere “out there,” the only place left is traveling inside. Spelunk the cavernous soul and try not to provoke all the bats to fly out at once.
It’s getting weirder. My days don’t so much run together as they “are” together. My past feels as bright and relevant as the days I lived it. I’m back in my old bedroom. I’m walking my high school hallway. I’m in the fight, zoned out in front of the TV, and crying as I piss myself 10 steps from the bathroom. It’s one thing to have a good memory, or god forbid enough trauma growing up you can’t ever forget, but how do you describe when it changed. How do you say, “I didn’t live it, I am living it?”
It’s as if something is out to get you. Not catch you. Get you. Like you represent something. Like you actually are something. Asking about whether or not that something is “meaningful” seems to miss the point. Imagining some kind of god or advanced civilization powering on your program just feels vain.
You must consider how perfectly delusional it sounds. How perfectly delusional you actually are. So what? You have a handful of flashbacks or compelling memories. And? The past is the past, and my poor understanding of quantum mechanics blah blah blah. It’s not like you can remember every single day. It’s not like your brain is like a videocamera. It’s not as though you can even process that amount of information, let alone have someone you expect to believe it’s running you like you’re poorly describing.
It’s not words though. It’s a sense. It’s not an itch or a faint echo. It’s a whale. It’s an intense pressure and [BOW] that twists you up like you’re being looked at as though light is bending around you. It doesn’t pulse. It doesn’t sound. It just encompasses. It is, here, deal with it.
It’s not just to do with the past though. The future also feels here too. All of it, any of it. I can feel myself rich and I can feel the pavement of me sleeping on the street. I’ve seen my death countless time in countless ways. I have the most beautiful family that started under the most inauspicious circumstances, and I’m as lonely as anyone has ever been. It’s all true. It’s all real.
My heart is racing. I have no power to stop it. It’s excited about all there is left to accomplish. It’s dreadfully afraid the worst has come true. It longs to be trapped in the moment where it complimented the butterflies instead of wishing to set them ablaze. My chest is always so full. Fuller than my stomach could ever be. Full of rage and heartbreak and desire. Full of hope. Full of every possible future it feels in earnest and wishes could spill out like a broken dam. My head pounds away for the answer, some way to release the pressure valve. Some way to zero in on the infinity. Some voice that holds true in the blur of noises and colors.
I scowl. I snarl like a dog who knows what his teeth are really meant for. Beneath a somber and pathetic brow I breath through my nose and twitch as the lasers from my eyes attempt to transfer the debris to the page. I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay. Each utterance sends chills and water wells. I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay. I have to believe it? I mean, it’s not suspicious that I said “have to” instead of “I do.” I’m okay. My hands slow down wondering why I’m bothering with one more. I’m absolutely not okay.
How can you be okay when you’re everything? How does one (1) class human male (xy) 6’2” 220 pound bag of meat and hair and electricity and water feel he’s in every moment of his past and feel every possible future? This delusional fucking liar! What’s the angle? What do you get out of this? You’ve made a brand out of being a nutcase? But you’re not angry about it. You’re scared. You want an identity. You want to believe even one thing about everything remains the same. You want the words where they don’t exist and direction in the void.
But you’re chasing a shadow. Your perspective is off, and the closer you look the farther away it becomes. It’s not about your gaze. It’s not about your brains. It’s not about your wishes and feelings or hopes and dreams. It’s that. It’s that thought. It’s those words. THESE WORDS. Right here is as close or far as you’ve ever been or ever will be to anything you remember and everything you could ever be. It was true then, and it will be true again. True is as you as is. True was that, is this, and is moving right along to now. You’re the hero! You’re the despot. You’ve got a future! You’ll be fixing your car every week until the day you die. You’re a ball of confusion and anxiety well beyond your conscious control. You’re abject power to dig and beat and bite that ball until it becomes a choking hazard. You don’t have to make sense. You don’t make sense. You are sense. You make words. You make. That’s what you do.
You make tears. You make shit. You make food and people laugh. You make up stories in your head about how you might relate to the stories other people have made. You make excuses and predictions. You make the world around you fall into the same existential black hole until they’re dying to get away from you because you make 10 minutes feel like 10 years. You make your stomach rise and fall when you make yourself focus on your breath. You make clicky noises as you make yourself...finally just pick this way to end this sentence.
If there’s anything that makes you different, it’s that you're undyingly aware that it’s all coming from you! You know what you make! You know how much more you can make! You know why it’s necessary and worth it to be scared. You know how much harder it is to make some overflow of love or acceptance, but it’s not impossible. You know you can make the hate dissipate. You know the migraine can subside. Your heart has figured out how to get bored with itself in the past, and maybe one day you’ll figure out how to get there again. Except, it’s already there. It’s already as scared or as calm as it ever was or is ever going to be. You made it that way. For your own reasons, but it was you nonetheless. Why don’t you trust your own work?
Because it hurts.
