Just a quick note: because most of the stuff I post here was written weeks/months before I posted it, there is some of it that I no longer identify with. I initially started this blog mostly for myself as a means of keeping all the stuff I write in one place, because I have a tendency to lose stuff I've written. I generally post this stuff as I find it in boxes, notebooks, my hard drive, loose groups of paper, etc., so a lot of what you read here might not necessarily reflect what I'm going through or how I'm feeling at the time that I post it.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
I woke up earlier than I planned this afternoon but when I tried to go back to sleep I was hit with a panic attack and I started to cry uncontrollably. The worst part is what brought the panic attack on.
I started to think about what she said yesterday, about falling for him when they were in that play together in high school. Even thinking about it right now puts a knot in my stomach and a lump in my throat - and he is someone I consider a friend... or did, anyway. The more I think about him, the more he seems like a sociopath, and the more I wonder how she could ever feel anything for him. She's not an idiot - she should be able to see through him. From all that I've seen of him while he's in the public sphere, I can't imagine he would have been in any way genuine with her - he would have put up his usual facade and covered himself in a sickening sheen of fake charm and sensitivity, and then proceeded to talk about himself at length, feigning interest in what she was saying until it was his turn to talk again. And how could she not see through that? How could she not see him for what he is? How could she fall for him and not for me?
And finally, it comes to what this has been about the whole time - me. It's always about me. I know that, I hate it, and yet I refuse to do anything about it. I feel like I'm better than him in some way, like she has so much more of a reason to choose me if she already chose him once, but I don't know if that's true. I don't know what I have to offer. Clearly we're both completely self-involved, but at least he has the confidence and motivation to actually do something productive - most of the time I'd rather just get high and feel sorry for myself. And maybe that's what scares me most of all. It's not the fact that she didn't fall for me - it's the fact that she was probably right in falling for him instead.
Monday, January 11, 2010
I stand screaming into the void in an ultimately futile attempt to keep this existential crisis at bay. I remember when I thought it was a sin to hate, when I would try to run at the earliest sign of rage that welled up within me. My efforts to run from anger usually ended in failure (as do most of my endeavors) and recently I have stopped running altogether. I have learned to embrace my hatred, not necessarily as a means of productivity, but rather because it distracts me from the apparent pointlessness of life. Depression and joy also help distract me, though the former is too painful (and often leads me to nihilism) while the latter occurs too seldom to be of any reliance. Anger, even when it is undirected, helps time pass faster; seething gets me through the day with little to no heartache. It is exhausting, certainly, but the alternatives are either too hard to come by or else are more painful and draining than rage. And should the opportunity present itself, my hatred might be focused and used, if not always to bring about general change, at least as a means of releasing whatever pent-up aggression, violence, and emotion I carry around with me on a day to day basis. Another benefit to anger is that it is pure. Other emotions have the ability to cloud my judgment, to make me say things I don't mean, to cause me to second-guess myself, or to feel the most loathsome of all emotions - self-pity. Anger is cold, logical, calculated, and generally justifiable. I have never thought of taking an action while angry that didn't later seem to make perfect sense, even if that action was violent or otherwise hurtful. I have meant everything I have said and done in anger, even if I denied my intentions after the fact. Beauty and love are not truth. They can be truthful, but they are not truth itself. Anger alone is the sole possessor of truth and vengeance is the only pure form of justice. I am in the process of releasing the chokehold that love has me in because I see now that vindication is the true path to nirvana; vindication is far more powerful and effective than love could ever hope to be. Love is messy and leaves a person open for pain. Hatred and vindication burn clean and guard a person from external pain.
I do not want this need for love.
7.29.2010
7.16.2010
#5
c. December, 2008
The tastes of menthol and tobacco mix in my mouth. The smell of smoke hangs in the air around me. I can't escape that smell. It's everywhere I go now. It has affixed itself to my bedroom, my clothes, my car, my hair.
Depression creates smoke too. I wish I knew how to air it out. It chokes my brain, obscures my thoughts, clouds my decisions. I can't see through it. It immobilizes me. I wonder if it's as tangible as cigarette smoke, if people can see it hovering in the air around me, if they can smell the stench of it on my skin, if they can hear it in my voice. I know I can. I don't think they can sense it. If they could, they would just leave me alone. It would disgust them the way it disgusts me.
The tastes of menthol and tobacco mix in my mouth. The smell of smoke hangs in the air around me. I can't escape that smell. It's everywhere I go now. It has affixed itself to my bedroom, my clothes, my car, my hair.
Depression creates smoke too. I wish I knew how to air it out. It chokes my brain, obscures my thoughts, clouds my decisions. I can't see through it. It immobilizes me. I wonder if it's as tangible as cigarette smoke, if people can see it hovering in the air around me, if they can smell the stench of it on my skin, if they can hear it in my voice. I know I can. I don't think they can sense it. If they could, they would just leave me alone. It would disgust them the way it disgusts me.
7.07.2010
#4
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
She asked me to come over once. My entire world stopped for half a second before I managed to get out my response - "Yes." She told me there would be a few other people there, but that didn't bother me at all. She wanted to see me. She wanted to see me. This was obviously meaningful.
I spent the last few hours of my shift staring at the clock and thinking about how I was going to act when I got to her house. Would I play it off like it was nothing, act detached and nonchalant, play with her emotions a bit at first? Would I flirt with her, making my intentions known, while still keeping some emotional distance? Would I wait until it was just the two of us on the front porch, smoking cigarettes, and then start to open up to her a little?
Finally my shift came to an end and I started driving to her house, nervous and excited, my mind going a million miles a minute, thinking of all the great things that were going to happen when I got there and how I would think about those things fondly when we were madly in love with one another down the road. I pulled up in front of her house and got out of my car. I rang the doorbell with my heart pounding in my chest, but when she opened the door all I could do was start smiling.
"Come in," she said. "It's a little quiet, but it should be all right."
"That's fine," I thought. "Maybe that means everyone else will go home early."
She opened the door to the living room, and my heart sank. Inside, sitting on couches, were three other men I'd never seen before. Instantly I felt there was something more going on; and as the night progressed and we watched television and talked about mundane things - music, computer games, community college, black and white films, philosophy, religion, theodicies, the existence of dark matter, the global oil crisis, arcane and esoteric Occult magic, the obsolescence of the traditional family structure, the sexual proclivities of Bob Crane, the Rwandan genocide, the increase in cigarette prices - I couldn't help but feel that I was being observed, that I was being tested in some way. I felt like the future of whatever relationship I might have with her was being decided that night, as though we were starting down a Calvinistic path, and when I stepped out of her front door and got into my car to go home, something between us would be irrevocably changed, something that could not be undone.
To this day, I feel as though if I had acted differently that night, she might have left the third man there by the wayside and chosen me instead - that if only I would have made my emotions clearer, we would be asleep together in my bed right now instead of me sitting awake, writing this. As absurd and grandiose as I know this type of thinking is, I cannot shake the feeling that something was decided that night; and because of what was decided, I will never get a chance to be with her.
Of course, there's no way she put that much thought into it... right?
She asked me to come over once. My entire world stopped for half a second before I managed to get out my response - "Yes." She told me there would be a few other people there, but that didn't bother me at all. She wanted to see me. She wanted to see me. This was obviously meaningful.
I spent the last few hours of my shift staring at the clock and thinking about how I was going to act when I got to her house. Would I play it off like it was nothing, act detached and nonchalant, play with her emotions a bit at first? Would I flirt with her, making my intentions known, while still keeping some emotional distance? Would I wait until it was just the two of us on the front porch, smoking cigarettes, and then start to open up to her a little?
Finally my shift came to an end and I started driving to her house, nervous and excited, my mind going a million miles a minute, thinking of all the great things that were going to happen when I got there and how I would think about those things fondly when we were madly in love with one another down the road. I pulled up in front of her house and got out of my car. I rang the doorbell with my heart pounding in my chest, but when she opened the door all I could do was start smiling.
"Come in," she said. "It's a little quiet, but it should be all right."
"That's fine," I thought. "Maybe that means everyone else will go home early."
She opened the door to the living room, and my heart sank. Inside, sitting on couches, were three other men I'd never seen before. Instantly I felt there was something more going on; and as the night progressed and we watched television and talked about mundane things - music, computer games, community college, black and white films, philosophy, religion, theodicies, the existence of dark matter, the global oil crisis, arcane and esoteric Occult magic, the obsolescence of the traditional family structure, the sexual proclivities of Bob Crane, the Rwandan genocide, the increase in cigarette prices - I couldn't help but feel that I was being observed, that I was being tested in some way. I felt like the future of whatever relationship I might have with her was being decided that night, as though we were starting down a Calvinistic path, and when I stepped out of her front door and got into my car to go home, something between us would be irrevocably changed, something that could not be undone.
To this day, I feel as though if I had acted differently that night, she might have left the third man there by the wayside and chosen me instead - that if only I would have made my emotions clearer, we would be asleep together in my bed right now instead of me sitting awake, writing this. As absurd and grandiose as I know this type of thinking is, I cannot shake the feeling that something was decided that night; and because of what was decided, I will never get a chance to be with her.
Of course, there's no way she put that much thought into it... right?
7.03.2010
#3
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
It's impossible to truly love anyone unless you love yourself first. Self-disgust is self-obsession, to quote Manic Street Preachers, and if that's the case it is impossible to love another person if you hate yourself because by definition your hatred of yourself means that you are focused on yourself - and how can you love someone if you're focused more on yourself than you are on them?
It's impossible to truly love anyone unless you love yourself first. Self-disgust is self-obsession, to quote Manic Street Preachers, and if that's the case it is impossible to love another person if you hate yourself because by definition your hatred of yourself means that you are focused on yourself - and how can you love someone if you're focused more on yourself than you are on them?
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