[14:19] i_mancer: Jamie thinks that since I am loosing my mom, finding Jess is like the universe trying to give me something new back [14:20] oweinmerricke: I think instead it is the universe proving that it has a twisted sense of humor. [14:21] oweinmerricke: "So, you like flirting with Abbey? Well here's a daughter who's just about the same age."
Don't talk like one of them. You're not! Even if you'd like to be. To them, you're just a freak, like me! They need you right now, but when they don't, they'll cast you out, like a leper! You see, their morals, their code, it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you. When the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve.
I didn't ask to be sentient. I don't remember asking to be self-aware. To know my own mortality. I didn't, but I got a whole steaming pile of it. With a side order of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
I'm having panic attacks again. Bout things I have no control over. Things that life has trucked on along for millennia not worrying about. Because it is inevitable.
God, just the weight of that word sends shivers down my spine. Inevitable...that which is incapable of being avoided or evaded.
I seek comfort...I wish to be comforted. I crave it with a vehemence only the troubled seem able to muster.
In the light of day these things don't bother me. I can push them to the side with all the daily trivialities of normal life. Where am I going to have lunch, does this project due tomorrow or next week, did you see what so-and-so was wearing, kiss kiss hug hug, facebook update and a twitter or two.
But at night...after the darkness falls...it creeps into my brain. Settling about my mind (if such a thing exists) like spider in a web, subtle, waiting.
"How many more times," the thought asks, "will you see the light of day?"
A shudder rings across my thoughts.
"Even if you live another 50 years, that's only 18,250 days...What happens then? What comes next?"
I attempt to force the thoughts away with logic, with pseudo-intellectual ramblings. Information (in several of its meanings) can't be created or destroyed, I reason. So I must have always existed, and will always exist in some way.
"Is that enough?" The thought queries, mockingly. "Are you sure? How can you be?"
Sometimes my mind, by virtue of my up-bring or socio-evolutionary encoding, cries out for the hope that religion offers.
"But has that ever been proven?"
Of course faith, by its very nature, is faith.
"Have you felt a calling? Seen any burning bushes lately have you?"
I have no answer.
The thought fleats away, smug, as if it is aware it has won again.
I have drugs, legally prescribed, that I sometimes use to drive the thought away. But it only works for a night. If that.
I could run to other, legal or not. But that would be a surrender that I am unable to concede. I don't like how they make me feel.
And you know what I draw as my only comfort...the simple fact that I share my misery with a string of singular minds that have touched the world for a brief time.
van Gogh was a schizophrenic and a drunk. Kerouac as well. John Nash couldn't tell the real from the un.
Beethoven...Byron...Hemingway. They all lived with highs and lows most people can't even fathom.
By his own admission Philip K. Dick never felt sane until moment he may have had a break from reality.
Don't for a moment believe that I regard my genius as anything compared to theirs. But I feel a kinship none the less.
I feel it strongly.
Because one day, like those listed above and so many others before, I will cease.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, we commend this mind to the void.
"But will you?" The thought quips a final stab from the darkness. "Heaven, Reincarnation, the Singularity...so may ifs, so many maybes."
"You can never be sure," the thought whispers, like a lover's 'goodnight'.
