I’m not so stressed, but I am aware that some kind of breaking point is soon upon me. Clock struck 12 and I could feel September sink in like a rock in my stomach. There’s a lot I need to figure out this month, and if nothing comes to fruition? Then… I’m outright screwed.
I mooch off my cousin today for a couple of trips for fast food, didn’t ask, just tagged along. I think he has some idea about how bad my situation is, but at the same time, I’m also aware that he can only do so much. He’s got to pay to have his wife’s new car fixed up and getting it on the road and such, along with other shit, and all I do is add further burden to this place. I can’t provide anything to anyone. Fuck, come the next few days, I won’t even be able to eat on my own anymore…
I see many people to my side and back moving beyond me, into something better, into anything at all. I see myself crumble at the light that shines down on me, and retreat to nothingness. Puts weird thoughts into my head. No one wants to really help… just cover up symptoms.
See a homeless person on the street, and he asks for a couple of bucks. Average person would act revolted and say “why, you’re only going to spend that money on booze!” Truth is, why wouldn’t that bum spend it on booze? It’s not like he can do the inverse and walk up and say, “hey, mind if you put me up in a place for a month or two, and help me get cleaned up and get some new clothes so that I can try and apply for a job and get my life back on track?” No one would ever be willing to do that. Just sort of makes a self perpetuating cycle. Homeless stay that way, the greedy keep to their own. Raise a family, start a new life, takes a lot of cash, why bother with a couple of bucks? I’m likely to be one of those hobos at some point.
Need to keep to our own. Raising a family’s tough, hard to make it on our own. Lash back, take what you need, give back as little as possible. Endless streams of refuse and people I would never call sentient. They’re self serving, not self aware.
Shortsightedness can always be spotted with trends. Idiots with ear gages not understanding how retarded they’ll look in the future when such a trend fades. Dumb college girls with tramp stamps not understanding that they’re willingly degrading themselves and perpetuating an image of stupidity and vanity. Most stupid decisions made in a person’s life happen at college. Why is it that no one is aware of that irony? The place you go to finish out your education, and you squander it doing as many foolish acts as you can. “I’m a free man! I can do what I want now.” Yeah, provided anything responsible isn’t on that list.
I don’t really like most humans, because I see in their eyes, the constant assumptions. Quick judgments made within seconds to grasp at a lifetime of trial and error. I see the little circle I had out in this part of the world dwindle for the sake of… fuck, I don’t even know, but it seems the worse things get for me here, the less people are willing to face it.
“I feel like I should talk to you about this” a former friend once said. Instantly the thought ran through my mind. “So? Do it then!” Again… nothing. Everyone will pat someone on the back and tell them it’s okay, but I’ve walked through hell to prove myself to people in times past, so kind words mean so little to me now that I’m in need.
I could strike the world down and have everyone call me a bastard, and it’d likely bring me some joy. So spiteful have I become, that the adoration I once sought from people has been replaced by a different feeling. I don’t want people to fawn over miniscule accomplishments of mine now. I don’t want their praise as I did in times past. Now, I want to watch the world burn.
I turn on the news and I want to vomit. People I once used to laugh with and smile at on the TV, they are now the people I laugh at. Politics, social issues, anything… vampires that prey on the weaknesses of humanity. People so enamored with their own image, that the world around them is nothing but a tool.
I take no comfort in anything, because in the annals of my memory, I understand that I’ve never had cause or reason to take comfort. Every time I worried about where I was going to live in a month? It was justified. Every time I had to sell one of my own possessions for food? I knew it was never coming back. All those times I’ve sat alone and contemplated the ruins that have ever lain around me, I understood…
I should have had a blast that one year in Kissimmee, so much money and freedom! But every night, I watched the numbers creep lower, and wondered where I’d be a year from that point…
It’s less about the financial instability I face, and more about the constant pleas of “it’ll be different this time” that I had to put up with. Through Georgia, through Kissimmee, through… wherever the hell I’ve been. It’s never been different. I’ve always been at the bottom, begging for scraps. It’s never been different.
Words… anything written. Stories, non-fiction, poetry, random thoughts. They make me sick now. Pathetic window into what I’ll never be. Worthless dream to make me forget all the regret… all the mistakes.
Even now I see myself spinning pointlessly out of my own control. I snap more often than I used to. Long time ago, I would never lash out at anyone, anything. Now my first reaction to someone that annoys me is the urge to strangle them, the need to make them go away.
I remember serenity. Keeping calm and walking out into the cold woods late at night. Music guided my thoughts and told me where to go. Now, it provides nothing more than a way to make the noise stop, to keep myself in check, to keep me from screaming when no shouting is needed.
I remember something as simple as a well crafted song could move me to tears… now, not even the burden of a lifetime of regret can stir anything within me. The raindrops fall and split apart and melt and strike the ground harder than any tear does. More faithful, productive. Teardrop on the sidewalk only evaporates, says nothing of sin or sorrow.
The night used to comfort me, fill me with energy. Now, be it day or night, I’m just tired all the time. Can’t sleep at any time of day, no room to block out the noise.
In the past… I tried so very hard to build order out of chaos. Such could never be… So, instead, now I try to rip away at order and bring chaos with me. That’s too easy though. Could be something as simple as a knife, or a few gunshots. But that place in between order and chaos… My brain wants to go there. But that place doesn’t exist. I can’t make it exist. I can’t bring it with me, I can’t write about it.
All of the beauty and wonder that filled my creative mind has left nothing but wilting thoughts. Ugly corpses of what used to be. On the sidewalk, in the city, I’m just a whisper. Busy people, going nowhere.
I’m looking for nothing but peace, stability… what has followed me is a shitstorm of trouble I’ve never been able to avoid. My mind is so obsessed with devouring itself, that I drop anything into it now, seek desperately for whatever I can to put me at ease. Distractions… people are distracting, places are distracting… none of it works. I see an image in my head, of what was to be, but it’s blurry, mixed up, none of the pieces are where they should be.
Not good enough… not holy enough… not pure, not safe… not worth saving. Another casualty on an ever growing list. Signals, disruptive signals, make sight, make the images… just a crude mockery of the real thing though, a pale imitation. The false images I feed myself at night to ease my mind into sleep.
Seventeen years ago… life was good then. Blissfully unaware of the problems that circled around me. Yet, even then I felt terrible about myself. Older brothers going to baseball practice, whatever it was, I just got shoved to the side by both parents. Like I was never really there. Had to poor my own breakfast in the morning, couldn’t watch TV… just sort of sat around, waiting for something to happen.
I look back at what once seemed idyllic, and now, I see clearly with regret and new prospective, that the seeds of ruin were already planted…
I don’t feel sorry for myself. I don’t feel angry, I don’t feel sad… truth told, lately… I don’t feel anything.
Not long ago, and yet the image is so vague
I hesitate to label it a memory
There was a show of local color and I felt astray
Cause I had nothing to offer but insufficiency
Tags: Journal
