Nothing reveals my humanity more than to write. To appeal to another human being with pithy words, laden deceitfully with the pretext that we must live, painfully dredges into view the vestiges of hope and expectation and desire. So I stopped writing.
It's like panic. The world is shaking. The part of me that has sense for the time left, the time we will have to do something, is exasperated and frantic, reviling me violently. My mouth is dry. My legs are sore. My neck is stiff. My heart beats strongly.
I have given it time. I have emptied time upon time on it. I think perhaps I am afraid of something. I ask myself, is it the future? Do I fear change? Do I fear death? Do I lack anything to be proud of? Am I unhappy with my life? What do I want?
I just can't feel for anything. To care about anything. What is a human being that has no expectations? Such little resolve can be summoned to escape filth and ruin. I haven't cried in years.
It feels like the years will not get better as they pass. But they have not been so bad. The things I have done seem pitiful to anyone but myself because other people appreciate so much more than I do. My teeth clench as my heart beats. There is a fiery welling arising between my shoulders. Each breath reminds me that I have felt this before. The thing that is like a yawn that provokes a tear in the eye. The thing that pulls at the lungs because one is lacking something necessary.
What do I want? I don't really even care to meet a girl. I don't really care what I look like. I wouldn't mind being thinner. I should read more. Life is not really hard. What is it I am looking for? Do I just want to feel differently? Do I want to be happy?
I guess what I like is that feeling right after you wake up and you are rested and you aren't tired. And you wonder what time it is. And you look outside and every day feels different, if only for a moment. Is this what we live for? Are we to achieve a state of mind and body that is free of want? I guess we just have to enjoy something. I have had enough company. I have had enough distraction. I have no stories to tell. I am comfortable enough. How can a song make me feel such longing? Have I missed something, God?
Living life with only two aspirin and a handful of phone numbers to my name. I can no longer tell the difference between things. I wonder what it is that the heart moves toward with such cosmic inertia.
I have taken a moment to pause and pay respect to the colossal enigma of life and how we should live and what we should seek and value and what we should tell our friends and our lovers and the vague sense of desire that has neither dulled nor dissipated nor been fulfilled in the entire time I have been alive.
Listening to this song reminds me of girls I have loved. I never knew what Amara wanted, nor what Vera saw in her photos, nor how to impress Ellie. I daydream about times when I was close to them. About furtive, meaningless glances across the gymnasium. About a first kiss that like wine was not altogether unpleasant yet was beyond me to appreciate. About the night I should have learned that I did not know how to make a girl happy.
I think about Vera the most. It was not that I was in love with her but out of everyone I wanted her to remember me. By then I had dismantled the mechanisms that surround love and I have carried it with me, unadorned and ineffectual, because one day I might find use for it again. Vera is special to me because, to me, she was not caught in the currents that pull us everyday towards the vast, unquantifiable end wherein we lose ourselves. I have to ask myself what I fear in this. What special need is there to remember oneself? Perhaps I am just specially afraid of losing myself, what I have of myself. Anyways, Vera saw something in her photos that I saw too. However, I cannot say what it is. But it was sufficient for her to cling to. The same as I find these words myself enough sometimes. I have yet to ask her what it is that I saw but could not describe, limited as I am to the explicit meanings of words. I can't say she can explain but she will know better than I ever could the wonderous meaning of her photos.
And now I do not love. Whether I am wiser or more wary, I have decided that I must improve myself before I can have a romantic relationship. I feel that it would be difficult for a girl to be involved with someone who is as much nothing as I am. And to a degree it pains me less to be alone now than when I was younger. It is just that this song makes me wistful.
The whiteness between these words are really comforting. I just stopped thinking forever. The strands of words escaping my fists until everything is on the floor and I hold nothing. But between these letters is something. I can feel it.
I have been awake all night. I drove my cousin to school and got some food from Del Taco. I like the hashbrown and steak burrito, but the chili-cheese fries were unsatisfying. I only ate a few bites while reading a manga online. I wonder if it is a virtue to eat until one is satiated. Whether people without two dollars and fifty cents to spend frivolously could understand the particular kind of respect that moderation requires.
It was just before nine when I thought to write. I always wake up late and make my parents late to work while my brother is always awake well before being told to wake up, doing so at the expense of his sleep. I wold not live on two hours of sleep. But I cannot tell any longer how well I sleep for my whole life is akin to sleeping. When I am awake it is already time to go to sleep. But I stay up all night and fall asleep when the sun makes everything less cold. And at the end of my day, everyone else is asleep and I am a little lonely.
I like this song. It is difficult to explain why. Since it was introduced to me, I have followed it along its winding melodies and over the drum rolls and attempted to see that far destination where all of its efforts lead. I have enjoyed many songs. It has become necessary for me since I was young to listen constantly, as if silence were blindness and as if, instead of my own strength, I have drawn upon the pulsations inherent in music.
I spend my nights beside a tiny lamp, typing words slowly, pondering clauses as I listen to a melancholic song. Other nights I have spent for idle amusements meant to distract me from the inevitability of living. Every night, however, is spent alone and beholden to the desire to live that keeps me awake. And I sit here, living under this song as if it were the clean rain whose soft coldness is too brief.
I sat and looked out the window at the snow drifting. The snow fell so slowly, quietly, like the sound of time passing. I sat, amazed and absorbed, watching something happen.
I wake up and the snow makes the light fill my room with light that is less blue and more pure than it would be on warmer days. I lie in bed, aware of only this.
I pee quickly as if I have somewhere I desperately want to be. Afterward, I climb onto the couch and stare blankly at my desktop background. This fills the hour: peeing and blank staring.
I haven't showered in days. I pick the dandruff out from under my fingernails. It makes it so I can't even enjoy plunging my face into my pillows. I brushed my teeth because I couldn't stand the taste of scum on my teeth anymore.
At night, I sit on my bed, among the unmade blankets. I feel discontent. I want to talk to someone. I wish I were somewhere. I wonder how anyone could go to sleep like this.
I wander through the house without my glasses. It feels comfortable, although everything is blurry. I know the last step of the stairs. I get myself a cup of water and I ignore the brown ring of coffee stain. I don't think it matters. I drink deeply for this is the first water I've had all day. I drink deeply for reason I don't quite understand. Am I sane?
I am in love with a girl. I go to sleep, clutching a dream of her.
I never get anything done as I make time for people who want things from me. It's not that I hate people. I don't like people. I never meant to think anything of people. I imagine my apathy would disgust any other person and instead of trying to reconcile myself with society, I just avoid people who assume that I want anything of them. This is why strangers are such great companions. I hate the artifice of conversation that occurs when people see my ugly mug. I behold a person in regard to the words they are capable of. I look at them and wonder if they would ever say, of their own volition, anything profound. That is what I want. The words that break the commonplace.
I feel ugly. My face is not even average. It is strange and rare in its subtle deformity. My lips protrude and effect disgust. My eyes have circles under them. The roundness of my face makes me seem incompetent. I have always wanted to be liked. It was never within me to like myself. I wanted consolation from others. Therein is happiness. With acceptance of my entire being is the end of my weary struggle. Because I just wanted to be loved and cared little for the world further. Is my simplicity so vapid?
I don't know why I write things down. I feel that these words should be recorded. I enjoy reading the things I have written. There is a tranquility inherent in profound reflection. The effect of the true extraction of our subjective states is the sublime. These words are the kind that carry me through the late strains of the soul, when we stay awake and try to remember what we are living for, what we wished to have accomplished at the end of the day before we go to sleep, the end of the night without the satisfaction of having gained anything. This is how time haunts me.
