mindjames

Category: love

Love, romance, relationships, emotions, and all of that stuff that makes it such a beautiful train wreck.

  • Letters I Shouldn’t Write

    Here I am, in the dark, before the sun steals such solitude away from me, and I’m sitting at my desk writing something I almost wrote last night. I’m listening to that song Millionaire. I played it for you a couple summers ago. That songs always made me feel all the bumps and edges of depression and sorrow. I shared that with you. It was never you that made me feel that way, but we got there together. So I’m listening to it again, as I sit here by myself writing letters I shouldn’t write.

    That song will always be able take me back to that place, and in turn, back to you. But then again, I don’t know if I could ever sincerely turn my back to you. I vaguely remember the past couple of hours, at best, but here I am. It is almost like blacking out for a while, then you wake up and see your life before you, and then you’re before the altar– and that’s that. Here I am now.

    Had I actually wrote this last night, it would have been a subtle, seething and counter-bitter cry for who knows what. It wasn’t that I felt I resented anything about you, but I resent being resented. I hate playing the villain. I know I put myself in that position, and I know a real man takes that role and carries it til the end of his days if he has to, never complaining, never looking behind his back, searching for someone to see that it isn’t just, but what in life is?

    With that said, I sit here, in this lightless, gray-colored solitude repeating this song and knowing that I don’t feel that resentment right now. I just miss things. I couldn’t say, at any point, that what I did was wrong, it wasn’t exactly right either, but it was necessary. I still say that in some twisted way, I did you a favor, because I know how cancerous I had become and you don’t need to be a second-hand life victim, but was it worth giving all that up in trade for the entirety of my life?

    I don’t know.

    I just know that I miss all that was. The other family that I didn’t go and visit enough. My pets, becoming a closet Crimson Tide fan, the lazy days together, the crazy days together, the time apart afterward, the shoulder to offer or the shoulder to cry on. I do, very much, miss you. I never haven’t. It wasn’t until recently that I started to feel the full effects of it all. If you ever read this, hopefully you’d realize this is a good thing. It is my great thawing from that time of cryogenic emotional freezing. I’m becoming free again, maybe I’ll come out of this cocoon as a flourishing, fleeting, flying being and not a mutated carcas. I wish I could make you proud of me again, and not think of me as someone who was, so I hear, bad to you. I know I couldn’t show you that though, even though I’ve started to breathe again, I couldn’t go back to it all yet, this lonely path still has plenty of unwinding left before I can join the rest of the human race.

    As much as I yearn and miss everything, to even consider backtracking would be foolish– not that you would have any of it, but in spite of that absolute truth, I just miss that shoulder; both sides of it. I wish I still had that ear that fully understands me, but I am nothing but pure vulgarity to that ear now.

    What is more bitter than spoiled love?

    Don’t get me wrong, I feel good, and life is great. If I told anyone I’m on top right now it would be truth, but..

    I feel like a bum. I’m feelin’ sad like a million bucks.

  • Hello – revised 3/7

    Hello,

     

    I am miss you.

  • Three years ago today

    Three years ago today, well, actually I’m a day off, but to me it’s still the 16th because I’ve yet to go to sleep..

    Three years ago today I bought a bunch of kids valentines. For twenty-some-odd of them I wrote each of them to you, one for each year, reconstructing in my head for each year what I’d likely write to my Valentine for each year. It was a taller task than I had envisioned in my head, but after what totaled near two hours I completed them. In a way, I poured out 21 years of my heart into them. Even as a child, I never got these foolish kids valentines in school. It seems like even the kids who brought them for the entire class still forgot one for me. I was satisfied with my work, which was good, because it was time for our night by the time I had finished.

    We met in the dorm. If I were more awake and less delirious, I bet I could remember every tiny detail about you, but in my basically drunken state, all I recall is that you appeared, to my eyes, like the perfect cut out, as always– you were as beautiful as ever. Of course, this only made me more nervous. I would have to compensate by being more ridiculous than usual to cover it up. We got to my car and that was when I blitzed you with my Valentine assault. We both hate Valentine’s day, it’s a shallow holiday, but this meant a lot to the both of us. You received it better than I had hoped. I was 1 for 1 with a homerun already. I then fired up the playlist of really old French songs, which seemed apt not 0nly because you were a former music turned French major, but French songs are romantic. Lord knows what they are saying, and they may not even sound good, but it hits the right mood.

    We ate. Not Italian, like we’d hoped, but that’s ok, we ate plenty of Italian in our time together following, because we never were not in the mood for Italian. That was fine though, Zoe’s or whatever we ate was fine because it was with you. You also enjoyed the fact that it wasn’t crowded as much as me. Persepolis. That was the name of the comic turned movie that we saw that night. Like many things that night, it too was French or France related. It still makes me sad that it was the only time I’ve seen it, it was good, and it will always remind me of that night and you, but now I guess watching it would be a bad idea. I remember holding your hand during practically the entire thing. I’ll be honest, hand holding is arduous through an entire movie, but it is funny to say; I had always admired your hands. They seemed to be an extension of your gentle personality. They are. I had been envisioning this for months by this point. Even if it was cliche, even if by the time we had been dating for a while we didn’t hold hands during an entire movie, we did for Persepolis. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Such a strange symbolism, holding hands. When you’re young, it’s practical. Your mom or older sister might hold your hand to keep you close and together, to make you feel secure. When you have romantic inclinations it is more of a unification thing, weird how the associations are just what they are– different. There is no gradual shift or learning of this other symbolic weight the gesture carries, we just assume it.

    Three years ago today that movie ended, but it was still very early in the night. Plus a movie is something one might do on a date, but it lacks necessary interaction. We ended up going to the Natchez Trace that night. It wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t cold. It was partly cloudy, but more on the clear end rather than cloudy. The moon was very present, and the mixture of shadow and illumination on the sprawling, flat clouds combined with the starry patches for a pleasant picture to gaze at. It was around that place and moment that we first kissed. Considering the months of build up and waiting for you to come around on me, it was about time, no?

    We didn’t get back to school until sometime after 1 AM. Of course there was that trip to Jack in the Box that preceded it. I have a habit of having an accelerated appetite on dates, especially those initial ones. It must be the nerves. Crazy to think that back then it seemed insurmountable to get you to eat junk food with me, it was always a salad, two grains of rice and algae for you, miscreant. Over time, I trained you well, though. I remember walking back into the dorms with a milkshake in hand, and you by my side. Everyone was still up. Everyone was still in the lobby. It was almost annoying, because I didn’t expect it. I wanted to float back inside, kiss you good night and continue hovering, much like a wisp, and drift into my bed directly to sleep, as if I had been dreaming the entire time. This way, when I woke up the next morning, I’d have to separate reality from fantasy, and be overcome with the joyous epiphany of my great fortune. It was ok though, I didn’t get that, but the crowd in the lobby was a reminder of the support I’d gotten along the way. Plus I played the rest of it out like I wanted after we hung out with everyone for a while.

    From that day we spent every day aspiring to be as close to one as possible. We were eachother’s.

    And if some things, mainly myself, been just a little different, we’d have been together today, looking back on that night three years ago. That is both a really long time and also a very small amount of time. I guess if I had known that three years from that night, that you’d have completely removed me from my life, I would have never had that night. It wasn’t worth that much loss. Yes, I know I ended that special bond between us, but I wasn’t trying to end us as a whole. I guess I have to play the villain sometimes. I believe that I’ve been miscast though, maybe one day that will be corrected.

    I guess I am writing this partially to reflect, to reminisce on fragments of a very close, warm memory of mine. Partially because the nightmares have been coming back. You’ve been in my dreams a lot lately. We often try to meet each other, but obstacles and unbelievable trials always get in the way. I caught fire in my last dream! By the time I had extinguished the flames you had left without me, and gone to the place we had planned on going. I tried to get there myself, but got hopelessly lost. Not only did I not find you, but I didn’t make it back home either.

    Speaking outside of the context of a stupid dream, wherever home is, I am far from it. I don’t know anything anymore. The first month being out of a relationship was basically my first month alive that I spent being asexual– at least, that’s how it felt. Being sucked in to something so intensely and for such a prolonged amount of time, I fear that I lost my ability to interact with a female of any sort. Even now, I haven’t gotten much of it back. I guess I’m still rehabilitating. Any of these female types that I previously knew were about the closest I could find in terms of interaction. I guess it is just one of those things where prior memories remove any occlusion on this interaction, like finding an old comfortable place. Yet, even so, it only has helped so much anyway. I still feel limited even in these instances anyway. Everyone is so settled down. It seems everyone is so hellbent on being as far away from alone as possible. Are we really that insecure? Are we really in that much of a rush to have the rest of our life bound, in metallic glow, around our finger? Life expectancy in our society is astronomically high compared to what it was even in the last century– the rest of our life is a long time. Shouldn’t we live some of it ourselves before we commit to it together? You would think we would tend to let the proportions of this extension mirror these monumental changes in our lives, but it seems like a good chunk of my generation is actually quicker than the prior in this regard. Are we really that vain that everywhere I look, an acquaintance, a comrade, a close friend is continuing their line; miniature versions of themselves wound up and set down to roam the earth, likely repeating their days under the same veil of ordinary-hood that their parents have settled down under? Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for all of these people. Close friends, acquaintances, strangers and the like, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t annoy me at the same time.

    I just can’t be sucked in. I can’t be strapped down. I’m not trying for anything either. I just want to be me. I still want to spend time with you. I still like seeing all of you, but you’re a drag, too. If you’re a girl and you’ve tethered yourself to someone, we can’t hang out. Not because I’m some sort of threat to that tethering, that’s just ridiculous, but rather just because of protocol. Because I’ve had my share of protocol and headaches and insecure parties causing fits over nothing, and I don’t want to risk anyone being in that position. Because it just isn’t worth it to me. I don’t want to see you if I have to be on my guard anyway. Not alone, not in a group. Because your intended life path is so clearly written out for me to see. We’re headed in different directions. It works for even my guy friends too, though. For instance, there is almost a guarantee that we won’t be able to get into anything that we’d look back on and just fawn over how crazy it was. It isn’t the craziness that is good, it is the potential for craziness. Life is unpredictable. Unpredictability is a necessity.

    I will admit, I’ve had time to readjust to this concept of being single again. I’m getting a grasp on things. I already knew one thing for sure:

    There will be no relationships. Not in Houdini’s foreseeable future. It’d be nice if everyone could just automatically understand that about me. Why would I anyway? The only woman I needed in my life in that way, I had. I let her go not because she wasn’t adequate in that regard, but just because I wasn’t fitting into the constructs of a relationship– or at least headed, quite rapidly, in that direction.

    With that said, I miss genuine friendships with the opposite sex. I spend a couple of years, to nobodies fault, yet still largely my own doing, alienating the good friends I had that were girls. And now I am in a place where I must fix this absence, granted, I had never wanted to distance myself to begin with. Things just turn out like that do sometimes. While I have come back around, I find that I can only remain in the periphery of pretty much all of these women, at best. Periphery is not good enough for me. I have half a mind to have a screw you mentality about it if I can only be a blip on your radar, a flash of motion on the outskirts of your vision. I’ve spent enough time being on the outer perimeter of your lives anyway. Forget that I spent all that time knocking on the gates of the castle, I really am sorry for everyone who encountered the same when things were flipped around, but I’ve knocked and begged to be let in enough. The nice thing about peripheral vision is that it is easy for me to be out of sight and disappear completely. So I plan on that.

    I don’t know where that leaves me though. There are still enough of these specific types of friendships for me to successfully mend, but I have too many fears or concerns, I think. For one, I fear that I’ve entered into a more shallow phase in my life. I guess maybe I’ve always had that shallowness, and I just hid it well, even from myself. It is kind of like when I tell people I’m not nice.

    You might think I’m nice, but I’m not. I was just raised that way. The ‘me’ that I know is not a very nice guy, at all. He just isn’t the me that anyone else knows.

    I also have concerns that pre-existing friendships are too easily boxed in. There are plenty of sides to me that people don’t see. Different people might see different sides, but generally, you know someone for long enough and you really can’t change up or open up too many more of those sides without it feeling or being weird. At least, I don’t know if it is worth coming off as acting unusual (in what is actually perfectly usual of myself) instead of just relying on what has always been expected out of a friendship.

    Once again, you could pose that whole, “I’m really ready to move away from here,” campaign I’ve been on. I don’t want to go there, but it handles a lot of this. You have to meet new people. Everyone is a new, clean slate. I don’t have to feel forced into this pseudo faux nice guy act that I have hear, because everyone wouldn’t know me as that. Secondly, it seems easier to re-surround myself with those pesky penis-less friends we call women that way. I think because there is a tendency to go for the convenient. Convenient hear means sticking with what you already have, and also building off of what you already have. That element of convenience doesn’t seem to lend itself to the full array of friend-types I’d prefer.

    You know what would be killer? Well for one, I think I have always gotten plenty emotionally when it has come to all of my close friends who were girls in my life. So yeah, that would be killer in a sense, because I know that at least I feel a lot more whole when I have closeness on every end of the spectrum, because the way I’m close with DUDE1 or DUDE2 is just going to be so vastly different than what it’d be with CHICK-A or CHICK-B. I think this is a given though, as in, it will be killer, because I’d be bound to make these connections again. So what would really be killer is the kind of girl who is just someone you can have fun with and hang out, get into whatever. This seems tricky in my mind, because I’d think that this type of female friend would have to come with a high level of closeness and emotional trust, but as soon as you do that you lend yourself for that higher emotional investment. Exactly what I’m trying to avoid. No relationships, remember? I know I wouldn’t be susceptible to this, but a single female emotion is about seventy-eight times more FIERCE than a male emotion. So I have to wonder, does this really even exist?

    I guess this is something I will have to find out. These are just thoughts and concepts I’m trying to grasp in my head as someone who is still newly single, and someone who will be remaining that way indefinitely. Not that I even know how to cope with all of these feelings anyway, because as I alluded to earlier, the nightmares are back. Three years ago today.. and such and such. At the same time, I have to accept and continue to push for newer developments, yet drastically different developments, all while feeling like I’m notably my most shallow I’ve ever been in my life and having a bitter taste in my mouth towards a majority of my old friends, of whom I am responsible for the rift developing in the first place.

    These are thoughts I have. These are feelings I have. And I will definitely have to continue rehabilitating my ability to interact with fema-sapiens again, such a touch in my life is one that I am starting to feel the absence of.

    “Is that you John Wayne? Is this me?”

    It might not be pretty. You might not like it, but

    this is me (3000 words at a time).

    this would’ve been better as drunken rambling..

  • These days I’m not much into being sentimental, but I think I’d call this a love letter

    I know, I should have done this already. I’m sorry. Again.

    Since everything has ended this is a hard place for me to go. Lord knows I’ve already been depressed enough the past year, and I spend as much energy as I can spare to just function normally, but it is still wrong of me to neglect this. You’ve meant too much to me and deserve better, but instead, in what is likely the final scene of the third act, I will offer what I can. I know anything coming from me will mean nothing at this point, but maybe one day these words will acquire some value.

    What more can I really say? I love you. I guess I can’t say that anymore. I’m learning how to stop. I feel like one of the world’s most notorious criminals. For months, maybe even a year, all those times I said those words almost as a routine; not that I never meant it. Though, here I am today and I wish that I could have really meant it the way I feel it, but I also don’t think that humans can physically intimate such tender feelings, we can only find small things to vary in order to tack on small bits of emphasis where we can.

    I’ve done you wrong. I know this. I guess I’ve known this for a while, in the sense that the past year was not one of my best ‘performances’. One of the last times we talked, you brought up the past. It got me thinking about it too. Not even our first real date or anything, but further back. Back to the girl that I had already started falling in love with before you ever made the decision to accept my affection. That girl that I sort of met that one night where I played Spoons for the first time ever with a group of mostly random strangers. And all those times I happened to see you, whether it was walking by or off in the distance with your usual crowd in the passing year. That entire time I didn’t know you, but you always captivated my attention. I think for me, speaking as a guy, it is one thing to notice a girl; she can be cute, or pretty, or hot, or all these types of adjectives, which typically can equate to pretty large differentiations. It’s similar to gold. Civilizations have always had some sort of fascination and infatuation with this so called precious metal; always captivating powerful rulers and wealthy nobility. When they saw gold, they couldn’t take their eyes off of it (and always had to have more). In that sense, when a guy sees beauty, it is hard to not have your attention, your eyes, your vision, your focus completely siphoned away by it, but I think for as long as I can remember, I have understood it is a further thing than that.

    That ‘thing’ that catches our eye, that aesthetic factor that our brain convinces us is so satisfying is merely an attention grabber. You have always struck me as incredibly beautiful, but it is what follows that initial grab of attention that usually tells if a girl is attractive or what not. I kind of like to think we were wired that way for a reason. It isn’t just this concept of something nice to look at, but rather a signal. In this case, signals are meant to be further investigated. And I think that really is where the difference has always been. You weren’t just beautiful, or a pretty face with a nice figure, or any of those mere physical factors, but it was almost instantly apparent that there is something more here. That is the difference between seeing something that is ordinary versus something that you’re not sure man was meant to witness. You had my attention from the very moment I knew of your existence, because there was a spellbinding ‘something’ about you  that always made it clear that there was so much more behind the mask; a richness. A pure beauty.

    And this is my problem I’m having with the whole thing. I can’t say anything right. I can’t say anything true without feeling almost somewhat corny. What I’m trying to say to you is this: you’re undoubtedly physically beautiful in every facet. I told you so many times that you face was perfect, and never did I not mean that, in my mind’s eye, it was, but when I see a nice looking lady, which isn’t a rare thing at all, I don’t make these types of judgments just by looking at them. There is that whole adage about a personality being attractive or not, which further leads into this whole, “looks don’t matter thing,” and that is just corny and tacky as crap, but I think that its meaning is in the right direction. Looks matter, personality matters, but personality is part of looks. You can see a person’s personality, this doesn’t mean you know them or the extent of their personality, but rather there are things we learn to identify as visual representations of someone’s personality. They are coupled; symbiotic really. I could always see how intimidatingly pretty you were, even as you pretty much never wore any significant amount of make-up, and I could also see that it was in your personality that you didn’t feel the need to paint a mask of what you looked like, plus that always helps with the whole guessing game of, “What do they really look like without any of that stuff on (even with only a subtle amount it is still a guessing game).”  I hope this makes sense. A coupling of pure visual aesthetics and personality. I know it isn’t the best example by far, but I am really just hoping the concept carries the meaning more than using a concrete example as a crutch.

    I guess my point with that entire ramble was that you have always been a very rare thing to me. Someone who is instantly captivating and remains captivating. In my life, I’ve met a fair share of those who were instantly captivating and very shortly following nothing more than pop art, at best. Or on the converse, the type of person who cooks slowly and delicately, growing on me, but, and allow me to put it in a quite unromantically blunt manner, you’re like heroin without any of the bad side effects or risks– something so wonderful that it is reserved for mythology.

    Of course, I haven’t even begun to cover anything substantial, or the extent of it. To this day, I don’t know if I ever was able to adjust being your other half. It was something intimidating. Me, as the ugly duckling and you the graceful swan. Me the unsophisticated and ignorant cave man, you the elegant and cultured duchess. Or really, me the bum, you the treasure. It’s as if I broke into the king’s castle and stole his crown and was wearing it all over town. There is only one King’s crown, everyone know I stole it, everyone knows I don’t deserve it. I am not the king. I’m really sorry that I was never able to fully conquer that inequality I felt, walking around with you at my side, but that is just how I felt. I can only act so well, and I can only shake a feeling so far. I wish that I could have been putting on parade’s greater than Macy’s for you anytime we went out anywhere, because you certainly deserved it, and better than I could offer.

    Then there was the hard year, maybe and a half. Nobody is going to lie or pull any punches about it, it was a crappy time, but I look back on it all and there was never a period where I thought any less of you, or that I had to get out. It is kind of funny when I think about it, because really it is more like you spent some time being amplified, turned all the way up to 11. So even the smallest thing rung out in a deafening and overwhelming manner, often sending vibrations powerful enough to send Earth rattling shockwaves that rumbled on for days. But it also amplified just how gentle you truly were. Gentle is my favorite word I could use to describe it, because I believe out of gentleness, so many other wonderful things are born. Such as your sweet and always caring mentality. It makes me miss waking you up at 3 or 4 in the morning and just having you, without even opening your eyes or really ascertaining any real consciousness, latch on to me and never let go. It was as if all you had was me, then you were fulfilled. I think we both know it isn’t quite that simple, and there are greater factors for fulfillment, but it was just knowing that even if I had rejected everything and consigned myself to the couch and permanent bumhood, you’d always put a smile on your face and take care of me.

    Man, oh man, what did I ever do to deserve that? How did I ever manage to earn that?

    You see, that’s just it, I don’t know if I’ll ever know. I could say all sorts of sappy things, and use all this inventive, lush figurative language to try and paint out how wonderful you were in every way possible, but it wouldn’t do any justice and it would also preclude the point. You were someone so special to me that I never will understand what I did in my life to not only know such a person, but to really have that person grow to love you more and more each day. Sure, I actually feel like I could say that for a period of time, I was the best boyfriend anyone could have. Arrogant, cocky, ignorant, maybe, but heck, I believe it. How could I not have tried to be– considering who I was with? It was the nature of loving someone and having someone so special to love.

    That’s why I will always feel guilty.

    I know I lost that. I lost myself somewhere in it all. I was horrible to you for many months. I know you looked past it, tried to understand what I was going through. I know even when you were hurting the most, you would show your loving side even more. I’m pathetic, I know I am. You never deserved to go through any of that, even if it was my current stage of life. You never deserved to go through the end of it all. In my mind, I can’t imagine a more ideal person than yourself. When people go through break ups, they always say, you’ll be ok, there are going to be others– as if to insinuate that everyone can do better because it wasn’t meant to be or whatever. I also know that I have the ignorance of not having experienced the rest of my life following this moment, but that matters not, because it is in this present moment that I say that I can’t imagine a lovelier woman to spend my time and love on. I ruined it, and probably squandered the best person that ever happened to me for good. Assuming that, and the idea that “there will be others” (which doesn’t even concern me anytime soon anyway), sure there will be others, but there is only one you.

    I guess you understand it too. Heartbreak would be a weird thing if we had programmable clones of ourselves scampering across the earth, because, in some manner, it’d be a lot harder to really lose someone close to you. I know for you, there is not another me. I think that makes me hope even more that I haven’t ruined you. You said you can never trust again, or be close to anyone again. You told me you felt betrayed, and many more heart wrenching things. These things make me obese with sorrow and guilt to the point that I might burst. That is why I just hope you can forgive me. I hate how I had to lose a best friend.

    I promise you it was just the course of my life that sailed me off into this predicament. It makes me sound awfully hypocritical saying that my life is better off in the long run without the person who was the best thing for my life, but somehow, life doesn’t always make sense like it does in the way we come to expect with everything else. I think I need to end this letter now, I think the more I say will just do more injustice to you, I can never give you what you’ve really deserved. I honestly feel that. I know you probably hate me know, but I promise you, I love you. Even when I was at my worse, I loved you so much.

    I guess this is it… closure…

    I give you my least favorite phrase in the English language: I’m sorry.

    I miss you, my best friend.

    Love,

    James

    P.S. – Sorry for not proof reading my letter to you.

  • A Minor Tragedy

    note: June 16th, 2011 — I left this unedited because I like to see how accurate/inaccurate I was typing laying in bed with my eyes closed

     

    i:m writing this lying down in my bed with my eyes closed. Ipray that my alignment on the keyboard isn’t off, or else I’ll practically lose everything I’ve typed.

    There are perfectly good reasons why I am laying down, typing to myself. I have to wake up in about 3 hours and drive another hour to schoolMy sleep disorder aside, I think I could sleep but I am restless. Actually, maybe restless is the wrong word, let’s say stirred. I am stirred. I’m laying down right now, wth my eyes closed and I know that my life, currently, is a crockpot of bs. I think the fact that I have known this for, well, who really knows how long is more of the point. I’m shut off, man.

    It probably isn’t all my fault or intention, but I’ve completely withdrawn; from everything. I go on record as referring to this current point in my life as a minor tragedy. It is only minor because on the tragedy richter scale, my troubles register as a 1 or 2. With that said, I can’t deceive myself, or anyone else for that matter, anymore. This is about as significant as it gets, when considering the entire timeline of my life. I don’t know how manythings you could count as being’ right’ in the present. There are some huge ones, yes. My family, my faith (though it, admittedly, is a bit of a dry period, and I’m not too sure where I find myself fully there again), some close people. I have kivubgm carubg abd fully supporting parents. There is a girl who is absolutely devoted and crazy about me,  I don’t understand why sometimes, though if I ever mention any such confusion or failure to understand, I find myself quickly receding and falling silent for fear of messing something up– as if I have some sort of elaborate smoke and mirrors illusion on the cosmic scale, yet I have no such control or cognizance as to how it works, so I just hide behind it as much as I can. I probably betray these people everyday. And the other few close ones left. I betray people because I am disconnected. That itself is the betrayal. There are small pcokets in time where I seem to phase back in, as if my body were on auto-pilot and the rest of me is on vacation, but here I am, popping into the helm and teasing. Here are my thoughts. Here are my hopes, my dreams, my concerns. Here is me glad-handing everyone a little bit,see, I’m fine, it is the same old me.

    The hell it is.

    Nostalgia is a trippy thing. It is probably one of the biggest cons we pull on ourselves. The contiinual lie we get high off of, just to make sure we are always lying about something. Though, I do believe there are a lot of true feelings to nostalgia, I think they just become amplified to the point that we can’t hear anything else but the notes that we so fondly remembers, Even the misery sounds good when played through the strings of nostalgia. But man, I don’t think I’ve been overwhelmed by nostalgia lately. There is a difference between nostalgia and between a lot of what I’ve been feeling and thinking lately. Nostalgia doesn’t make me feel like my current place in life is so wrong. I don’t want to sell this as something that is a new thing, though this is the most ‘wrong’ I think things have been, but I think it is also the point where I can’t help but step aside and see how far things habe been moving in this broken down vehicle.

    I’m thinking just about everything is wrong right now. The convenient thing about being a student, is that we so easily get to break down our life into semesters. WE cut our years in half and we cut thoseh alves in half, and often times, those halves or halves of halves (yeah, quarters) carry a long with them much change.  Given that our perception of time continually compresses and multiplies until moments and events feel as insignificant as sand and that we can so easily chart meaningful change in our lives, it is no surprise that sometimes life can feel like it is just rapidly changing and spiraling out og control from what you want it to be, or what you tought it was. See, what I thought my life was, yesterday, is already a distant memory of what life what was. That’s just not right.

    I’ve pretty much been relegated to a hermetic state. Quantitatively, there is a lot on each side of the arguments, whether it has been voluntary or involuntary.

    For instance, I am, as I already said, detached, far removed, isolated from much of society. I feel like the past few years has just been a slow process of elimination. A big game of musical chairs with my friends. Sometimes it was me, pulling the chair out from under them as the music stopped. The other half were cases where I feel like the one abandoned, but either ay, I looked through my contacts list in my phone today and just felt really sad. Where did everyone go? Where did I go? Why do we all forget about each other so easily? That’s not right,, man. Here is the true meat of my social life; mom, dad, Kara. That’s really about it, then you have your players in significant roels, but not starring scrren time, people like my sister, or Slinky, or anyone of the Josh’s that I know) for some reason you can always rely on a Josh, and you always make it a point to make sure they can count on you). I am not a major socialite, and I can get by just fine if left on my own, but at the same time, you can have everything else feeling like it has decayed, but if you ave good people to surround yourself with, life will still feel, well, lively. There is no liveliness here. I don’t have any big congregations of old friends to look forward to. I couldn’t pull anything that you could even dare associate the word ‘antics’ withl I’m mummified. I don’t have anything new on the influx. Half of the excitement of social interaction is on newe frontiers. Our lives change, so do our people. Instead, my life has changed, but my people haven’t, so the ones who were there just dopped off like flies. Then it is stagnant.

    You know, if we lived in some sort of post-apocalyptic dystopian scenario, that’d be more than alright. I’d feel like a winner, I’d have everything I need. The problem is, society is still intact. A few hitches aside, in the United States, we all pretty much live the same lives we were born into. So when I enter society’s various realms, I’m surrounded by people who still have living lives. Ifwe were plants, I’d be feigning my bloom, my fruits would be nothing more than a plastic display, the soil beneath me is totally exhausted and as useless as stone. That is really hard to deal with when all the other plants around you still bloom in the spring, and produce ripe fruit each in accordance with the seasons. I’m stuck in a perpetual autumn and winter.

    From this point, I can say a lot of things that will get me into some degree of trouble with just about anyone who may happen to read this, so, of course, I will. Sometimes I look back on how the past few years have played out and wonder about how things could be diffferent if ___. I won’t lie, sometimes I think that not only would I be better off, but my girlfriend, Kara woud be too if we had never dated. Let me quikcly say that I don’t actually think this, as a dominant thought, but let’s just allow ourselves to understand that thought is more like a democracy anyway, the idea that we aren’t allowed to think some sort of thought that is contrary to what we truly believe is all messed up. What is doubt? It is just a minority thought anyway. Of course, sometimes democracy’s vote sways, but that is not the case here, I am just saying, I’ve had the thought a couple of times. Really though, there is some plausabilitiy to this. For instance, sometimes I  think to myself about Kara. I feel really bad about hiw her life has played out the past few years.. since I’ve been a major part of her life. When we first were getting to knw eachother, she had friends, a decent support group. Friends both male and woman-male. That was good for her, as it would be for ayone else. Now, that’s just simply and truly not the case. I am not sying she has no friends at all, but all of her ‘close’ friends aren’t there, nor have they been for a very long time. Sorry, I don’t just mean close friends, I mean close and immediate friends. IF you’re unable to play a mjor role in someone’s life on a weekly or daily basis, then you’re not really able to be an immediate friend, thiough you can be close. To be honest about this, it really really pisses me off. Why? I’l tell you straight up, I, with full conviction, believe all these so called friends just straight up abandoned the girl. What on earth kind of close friend does that? Ok, I admitted earlier that I’m guilty of such things, and have been since I can remember, I bet, but we are talking about all of them. This isn’t a new thing for her, either, yet this is someone who just isn’t deserrving of such a thing. On that same token, I wonder to myself, would  this have ever happened if we had dated? I mean, as much as we all try, when you seriously date someone, or anything along those lines, it just becomes hard to allocat our time and energy to everyone. There isn’t enough time in a day.  So on some end, I feel like I have ot have at least some significant blame for the initial distance forming between her and some of her close ones, until that turned into a chasm,  Ury, iy id sll dyill dprvulsyibr, brvsudr yo br honrdy, I eill never know how things would be. This means blaming myself, partly, for a person ending up more alone than they likely have ever been is perfectly valid. Thus I can still say this to all of you who did partake in such abndonement, screw you. I’m bitter because people just move on so quickly and easily. And you wonder why I struggle so much with self-loathing? I make myself sick!

    Repeating myself; things aren’t right. Here is how tomorrow is supposed to go. I’ll wake up at about 7:30 in the morning, I’ll drive probably an hour ecause of traffic up to school. I’ll park at the apartment complex I lived in last year and walk across the street, just as I used to do every morning for a year. I’ll fumble my feet, one in fron of the other until I drift into a classsroom. I’ll sit and pay attention. I’ll be mildly entertained from time to time by the professor, of whom I like, and take away small bits of inromation that my brain can nibble on. As soon as I leave the classroom, the amnesia process begins. Within 2 hours, at best, all of te crumbs are  just matter lost in the infinite vastness of ever expanding space, until all that matter ever knows is blackness and nothingness. I’ll go to some sort of lecture so I can get a number credited to my student record, so that I can get enough of these numbers to further contribute to my graduation. Between that time I may go to Kara’s apartment and nap, or go play basketball at noon for about 40 minutes until I repeat that whole class routine. In and out of reality, injecting myself for intol small cracks of society, then just like that extacting and innoculating myself. That’s my day. A few blips on a radar scan and non-existant for the rest. Because beyond that, I don’t do much else that registers anywhere. I keep to myself. I spend time with my girlfriend, or maybe a small small amount with my parents, or to myself, with my internet. There ar e a few other timesI get to be a blip, they vary slightly, and small exceptions or minor players, such as a cat and dog that I spend much time interacting with, but outside of that, I pretty much told you everything you need to know about an entire life, all in half of a day.

    The whole school part of it makes it all even more depressing. I treasure knowledge as much as any other man or woman who has at least a nominal value for wisdom would, but let’s look at education on a curved scale. The effects of my education, on the instituional level that e call school, has prety much maxed out. Not that it has, by any mean, just that if you did something like throw in a doctorate or something, I may end up much further with wahtever I’m studying than I am now, but the time, money,energy, thought and so on einvested into it doesn’t really justify the gain, because relatively speaking, it is very little. Most of my education comes from my own pursuits these days. I mean, I learn in school, and it is valuable stuff I learn, Lord knows I have a lot of completely useless knowledge I’ve chased down in my own time over the years, but we live in this world where we can soak up more knowledge than we can handle, and in more ways than ever. I don’t spend akk if my alone time learning, but I spend a lot of if learning, in some capacity. I study things that interest ,e to the point that they drive me. Just like we grow and experience phases that shadow the growthin our life, so do our interests change in this shadowing manner.  Right now I am obsessed with the art of storytelling through film and audio visual mediums. Obsessed. I feel absolutely compelled to absorb as much as I can, as I find myself coninually shaping how I want to tell stories through such means. I can write and pour endless thought into all things related, but to ask me to give you a ouple of pages on some poem I read in Spanish, or to analyze the environment of an industry and how it would affect a certain company are just so tedious to me right now. I can do these things in my sleep, and I pretty much have been for a while. So the scary realization hits me. At some point, the ability to force myself to do such things is going to run out. It is a finite thing to be able to force yourself to perform adruous work in things that you have trouble stimulating your mind with.

    I really try to not paint such a negative picture about school, because I don’t want it to seem useless. I have just had my fill of recycled thoughts and discussions on business this and industry that, and so on. There was a time I was obsessed with related things, for instance, the economic meltdown a few years back. I spent hours upon hours siphoning every piece of infromation out of what was exactly going on. The thing is, within the instituion, it is hard to get a real discussion going about the institution. I’ve pretty much met my limits in terms of trying to immerse myself in a languafe  in order to learn it, while being in a country where the primary language is English. So I take all these Spanish classes, yet get worse and worse at Spanish because I can’t force myself into furrther immersion so that I can continue to get a hold on the langue. I’m tired of having tons of thoughts on things that I understand in Spanish, but everyone having half-ballsed discussions because we can’t really express our thoughts like we’d like. I can continue, but my point is just this; arduous.

    Scary, you know? I’ve done this school thing for so long, 18 years without a break, and academia isn’t what I want to do with my life. To all the people with their PhD’s and Master’s degrees and so on, that is what was what they wanted on some level, so thyey were able to do it. More power to them. Intellecutally, there is no problem, in terms of desire, I’m scared that I’ve ran out, yet I am a few steps away from the finish line. Where is my motivation? It is lost. All of this stuff in my life is just suddenly missing; or so it seems.  So what happens I have to turn myself into a liquid and inject myself into cracks and small holes here and there, then pull myself back out again. I have to pour myself into all sort of things except the glass that I want to be in or need to be in. I exhaust myself, I difffuse myself, I dissipate. From here, anxiety grows.

    I’m filled with more anxiety than I ever have been. It is like looking at the national deficit 50 years ago to today, the quantities are that striking. I think when you look back on the past, I maybe outputted the same levels of anxiety, the anxiety farm always had similar crop yield, but I could spread it out all over. How many avenues do I have to sow my seed of anxiety now, when I myself and evaporated? Atomically, I am all over the place. I’ve drifted into the clouds, I’ve parted north, west, south and east. I’m in some other planet’s orbit, i’m in 60 different galxies at once and I’m only getting further away from the center. Do I want to go to school this morning? No. Do I want to continue pretending like I care the whole week? No. Do I want to continue hanging on by a thread, getting this graduation nonsense sorted out? No. Do I want to succumb toall that pressure and just tell myself i’m going to sit down and take a breather when I’m so close to the end? No. Do I want to risk never crossing that finish line? No. Do I want to step out of this buffer and truly put myself in a place where I have to assume the full responsibilities of a grown adult? No. Do I feel young at all anymore? No.

    Do I think back on to memories of simple things, like going to football games at my high school each friday and feel like that never existed? Yes. Do I think back on to how the stupidest stuff in my life was so exciting, like going to school each morning or to class later on in hopes of seeing some girl I hardly know but thrilled because I can add more to my memory than just that time she was wearing whatever and what it felt like when I made her laugh and feel like there is nothing to look forward to… or at least that life is not a simple as it should be? Yes. Do I feel like a lot of people who have meant a lot to me have abandoned me? Yes. Do I feel like I have abandoned a lot of people who have meant a lot to me? Yes. Am I fed up with how, if you round up, everyone so willingly and ignorantly falls into the exact mold society dumps them into? Yes. Do I feel bad for the people who are still unfortunate to be stuck with me and my current state? Yes. Do I think I am a ghost, a poorly executed program of the person I once was? Yes. Do I sometimes feel like I am locked in to what my life currently is and where that means it must be going? Yes. Do I feel bad for feeling that? Yes. Do I think it is wrong? Yes. Do I think that I’m a long ways off from where I know I need to be? Yes. Do I think that in the future that all these tragic elements and more will be back to being ‘good’? Yes.

    Do I think I can make it there with the current state of everything? I don’t know….

    Do I think I’ll be able to wake up in 2 1/2 hours.. I don’t know that either. I’ll feel even worse than I do now if I don’t, though.  School isn’t even just school at this point, it is my entire life, nearly all-ined over the course of 4-5 years, more of myself invested into it on all facets. We have so much pressure on ourselves in the things where there should be no pressure.

    When I started writing this, my eyes were closed. For better or for worse, they’re open right now.

  • Remote control

    I’ve got a robot version of myself. I don’t want to get into technicalities, but essentially, it is an exact copy of me; a remotely controlled clone. It is easier to call him a robot, so I do. The appearance, the mannerisms, speech patterns, everything down to the last hair follicle are a carbon copy of ‘me’. Without myself, he is a soulless, lifeless shell.

    He sits in my room, toiling away on various inane tasks and school assignments. He goes to my classes for me and collects dust, and if he were of 20th century design, gather rust. With flawless impressionism, he masquerades from here to wither-to. He holds conversations with people. He can even pass for a young businessman in the making. Some say he has pretty good presentation skills. He makes small talk with the friends of my friends or other various persons he may happen to be introduced to. After he makes their acquaintance, he says, “hey,” to them when he sees them and emulates similar facial responsiveness and brightness as anyone else.

    In his ability to flawlessly be me, for me, he is a perfect being.

    I am far away. It isn’t even so much that I always want to be, but I am. I couldn’t tell you where I am exactly, but  space is deep and wide. It is a void so vast that far away becomes just another detail at a certain point. I’m at that point. I am far away.

    I like my robot. I can control him from where I am. I am myself via proxy.

    My robot is not perfect. Even operating under a robust remote control system, he can only emulate. If he were an ocean, he’d cover an entire planet in his soothing embrace, yet if you were to dive beneath you wouldn’t get very far. He is Solaris.

    My robot doesn’t care for the average lives of average people. He does not need to be liked, thank goodness, for a robot with such a need would require too many batteries. He doesn’t care about many things. I can only program him to handle so many things at a time. Yet, that is all I need of him.

    Where I am at, the matters of the life of my robot hold very little concern. When you’re in space you are consumed by the Alien. Earth does not accept the Alien concerns and the Alien tasks. Earth is the Alien’s prison and society is the warden.

    I am grateful for my robot. He serves my prison sentence for me. He is an incubator. He is like a pair of well-tinted sunglasses to a sleeping student, yet at the same time he is also the voice recorder in his pocket. Even better, he is the illusion of omnipresence. I am here and I am there, or so you think.

    He is here so I don’t have to be.

    When I find my way back home, you will never know I have been gone. Likewise, when I send my robot self to his vacation to the great beyond, you will never know he left you. One day, I’m sure I will miss the robot version of myself. Will you miss him?