Monday Eve

The empty rocks glasses had been piling up, in all honesty they’d been there for quite some time. The glass on top was the only one that moved. Just long enough to be rinsed out quickly with a dash of hot water before being filled with another round of ice and Johnny Walker Red. The empty packs of Parliaments were falling out of the already full trash can in the corner of the room next to the line of empty bottles in rows like soldiers prepared to do battle.

It was amusing to watch them pile up. The evidence of a life wasted, of a life hindered. Someday the only evidence left to prove he’d existed would be a pile of empty scotch bottles and cigarette butts. At least they’d tell the truth. At least there wouldn’t be some bored asshole sitting around trying to figure out all the corners and cracks in his life for a misconceived biography.

It wasn’t as if this had been the plan. There was no grand scheme to be shut away indoors away from the world. Who would plan to be surrounded by dirty walls, carpet that smelled like an overused ashtray, and a TV that showed more snow than anything entertaining. The couch had the distinct shape of an ass on one side while the rest seemed as if it was still on the showroom floor waiting to be taken home. In a strange way, this was a summation of this wasted life. One overly used corner while the rest goes to rot and decay.

No. It couldn’t be that.

The phone’s upper right corner blinked incessantly on the corner of my desk, it reminded me of many things but not that I had a voice mail waiting. It reminded me of the constant headache that had pounded the inside of my skull for days. It reminded me of the ceaseless worry of always being alone. It reminded me of things I’d left unsaid, undone. The red light flashing in the corner of my eye was a constant reminder of everything I wish I could forget and leave behind.

It wasn’t the lights fault. It really had no choice to continue blinking endlessly in my peripheral vision. It wasn’t as though the light had decided, “Today seems like a good day to fuck with him. Yes, I will blink. Yes, I will bring up every painful memory in that man’s psyche.” At least I really hope it didn’t think that. Plotting and scheming the loss of my sanity. The more I think about it, the more that sounds right. Maybe it’s not me. Perhaps that light has been scheming against me from the first moment I walked into the office. It couldn’t possibly be my own madness come to peck away at the small, almost insignificant peace of mind I have left.

No. It couldn’t be that.

I’m losing my mind.

Does genius come from squalor and self loathing madness? Is there beauty in the finest details of our weakest and most insincere moments?

Does good come from evil? Can our truest selves be revealed in our worst moments?

Let me clarify.

Is our true self only revealed when the very base of our being is called into question?

When there seems to be nothing left to clutch, nothing left to claw and tear at, our fingernails filling with the dirt of the pits of our souls is there something to be gained here?

Lately I’ve felt that I’m walking a fine line between madness and some sort of eye opening moment of self discovery. I don’t know. I can honestly say I don’t know. What I do know is that my life as of late is driving me to insanity. Everything is filled with double entendre and double speak. Trying to interpret every sentence that fills my ears, trying to figure out if it could somehow be taken or understood in another way.

It’s become so bad recently that I’m almost positive that everyone who speaks to me is mocking me in someway. That in every joke or slight nudge of sarcasm there is truth. There is a small piece of what that person really wants to say to me.

I don’t know, I’m just talking here. Maybe I just need to get out of my safety net. Maybe the whole world out there, filled to the brim with people, are all going through the same shit. I have no idea. Maybe that’s the problem?

The other side to that argument is that, what if I get out there and find a world filled with people just like me? What good does that do me? I’ve just trapped myself on our small planet with a bunch of people who, in all reality, don’t know anything. We think we do, but we have no idea.

Sorry for the rant, it’s just late and I’ve had one or two too many beers. Just a thought, that’s all.

Note to self:

Quit reading Esquire Magazine.
Realize that their target audience is guys in their late 20s and 30s.
Remember that as old as you feel, you’re only 23 and you’ve got a lot of growing up to do.
Realize that eventually, you will be the guy in $1,200 shoes and $5,000 suits.
Realize that the stage of youth you’re currently enduring is meant for growth, good or bad.
Find a girl that’s tolerable, not perfect. Perfection is boring anyway, right?
Perfection is a state of being that was not meant for the likes of real men and women.
Eventually I will make that next step, whatever that may be.

Quit spending so much time on facebook and twitter.
Experience the real world more often.
Move to a real big city, get lost, be broke. Have fun.
Enjoy current financial stability more, quit moping about what’s come and gone.
Quit putting attainable women on platforms and giving excuses.
View the world from the eyes of a more positive person. Not an optimist, just someone slightly more positive than the current, “Half full? I don’t see the fucking glass.” -state of mind.

Be more stoked. Always.
Run more often, break a sweat.
Feel better about things you can’t change and don’t like.
Learn to let go.

Short story… pt. 1

The first step forward is always the hardest. This step is always the one that makes us question our motives, our ability, and even our own grit. Never an easy thing to accomplish, it reminds us to be humble. It reminds us that we are never as good as we have always believed we were in our heads; that in actuality we were weak and easy to figure. In my lifetime I’ve taken numerous first steps, none more important than the one I’m about to take. This step will define all others I will take throughout my entire life.

My story starts where all stories start, a mother who isn’t quite sure of what she’s getting into and a father who I suspect was quite like myself. Unsure of where this adventure would take them, they jumped in head first without first testing the depths. She was 17 and he was 19. Still children and already thinking about creating another. With best intentions creating a future that they could only guess at. I’d like to think that at some point in the process there was love between them, that love created my siblings and I. Although, I can honestly say that I don’t remember my parents ever loving each other.

I don’t remember them holding each other, I don’t remember them ever kissing, I don’t remember ever a warm embrace. My childhood instead felt more like a series of unfortunate events. I remember small apartments and my father always smelling of sawdust and construction, and my mother always being around. I remember our first home and how it was genuinely a home, not just a house, like all the others that would follow would feel. I can say with limited certainty that this is a feeling that comes with youth and does not lend to how the inner workings of my family were actually working.

I remember fights. I remember nights where I wanted to be anywhere but where I was. I wanted to be somewhere peaceful, where all I had to worry about was who was going to play basketball on the court the next day and catching bees in plastic bags on a flowering bush on my walk to my elementary school the next morning. I remember all of this, but I don’t remember love. I don’t remember feeling that what I had was secure. I do remember feeling like it would end at any moment and I had to be prepared for it. I had to be ready to watch my family disappear at the drop of a hat.

I remember feeling that this was normal. This was how everyone felt behind closed doors. During the day when we were away from home we smiled and laughed as if it wasn’t there waiting for us, secretly knowing that everyone else was hiding the exact same pain. What I know now is that while there may have been a few other children pretending to smile and laugh like everyone else, I was part of a minority. My assumption was my shield, protecting me from the ugly truth that not everyone is worried that when they get home, their family no longer exists. Returning to something completely different and even though it could possibly be better, it was still not what you called home. Not what you considered your place of peace.

The world was smaller then. Nothing existing outside of playing basketball in the summers until John and I could no longer see the hoop, my tree house in the back yard, and super mario brothers when John couldn’t play or when it was raining. Nothing outside Michael Jordan and the Bulls, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and watching ‘This Old House’ with my Dad every sunday morning. And if these things weren’t available, I always had Ali next door and the tire swing across the street in the neighbor’s yard.

This was my sanctuary and the world didn’t matter. Not only did it not matter but it didn’t exist. I was wholly enclosed in all these things and I didn’t know or care to know there was a world outside of this. That there were people living their lives much as I am now.

A moment inside my brain.

“…I need a cigarette..but do I really want one or am I just being weak…
…I don’t know, I’m not even sure what that really means. Being weak, sounds like something you’d see on an infomercial…
…I’m hungry, a hamburger sounds good, maybe some fries too, am I being weak again… i don’t know… this goddamn thought process is broken. So broken.
…I can’t believe work is this busy today… it’s a Thursday…
…I need to check facebook… I haven’t done that in a while… I wonder if anyone has said anything….
…I wonder if I made a mistake with ______… she was awesome… I’m not really sure why I made sure that went south…
…I don’t think you’ll ever know…It’s just not in the cards…I wonder what is in the cards though if that failed…
…I need to call that client back at some point today… I really, really do….
…I need to buy some running shoes…I don’t know a single male my age that doesn’t own running shoes…That’s a little weird…
…I really hate CNN…and yet I sit here day after day watching it… all day long…that can’t be good for my mental health…
…I need to get litter for Jefferson on the way home…It smelled so bad this morning…
…That girl from the sales floor is so hot… but shes kind of older… and has a really bad tribal tattoo on her arm… that’s unfortunate…
…I really wish I’d quit finding lame excuses and just own up to the fact that it’s not her fucking tattoo keeping me from introducing myself….
…I need a cigarette…..”

It is difficult.

The sun is bright and merciless as it’s rays reach my sleeping eyelids, forcing me to make a decision. Do I wake up, greet the morning and begin my day or, do I roll over and waste half the day trying to avoid the cold loneliness that is constantly slicing through my every thought. There is no alternative, it’s one way or the other.

It’s a melancholy that is unfamiliar with words, it is not something that is easily describable. It is difficult. It slips between the fingers and falls to the rug, to be swept underneath and quickly forgotten if possible.

There are other times though. There are times when the same sad and bitter feeling can not even be left alone for a moments time, not even just to clear your thoughts before sleep. Like trying to lift what seem like amazingly large stones when you’re a child. Your eyes tell you that you can, and because of that, you absolutely should be able to lift it. Only to find out that the stone goes six inches deeper into the soil than you were able to see.

“No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.” – John Steinbeck

Dreams

The world I inhabit in my dreams in not a friendly one. Most people’s dreams are a place of refuge, somewhere they feel safe and wanted. A retreat from the cold and unfriendly world they make their way through during their waking hours.

“I’ll always love you, I’m just not in love with you anymore.”

My dreams are cruel and are something I can’t seem to avoid. They are not something that makes me free or breaks the chains from my daily routine. They are the constant reminder of my past, the one failure that continues to haunt me, the love I lost and left behind. There seems to be no recourse and I can only hope that with time these wounds will heal, regardless of how large and terrible the scars may be. That somehow I’ll be able to turn my dream-turned-nightmares into what they used to be once. An escape, a calming retreat, a dream.

“I’ll always love you, I’m just not in love with you anymore.”

Although there are other things about them that seem to be literally driving me insane, the absolute worst thing about them is that they are clearly meant to remind me about how little progress I’ve made. As if my sub-conscious is pointing it’s finger and laughing at my attempts to move away from the things that have hurt me the most. It feels like walking through a desert towards what looks like an oasis only to arrive and put your hand in the water to drink and find it only an illusion, watching the calm waters move farther and farther away as you move toward it.

“I’ll always love you, I’m just not in love with you anymore.”

In these dreams I can feel her skin and lips, smell her in my nose, and see her plain as day. It feels real, as if by some miracle I’m not in a dream, and for but a moment it is actually happening. Things seem to be how I always wanted them to be. While short lived it is somewhat calming and peaceful. Nothing can touch me here, nothing can hurt me. Before I’m allowed to drink the water, with my finger tips just below the surface something changes. Something terrible and horribly wrong. The oasis is moving away from me. The cold and clean water is dripping from the tips of my fingers and I’m alone again. The one line that may haunt me for the rest of my life. Whether I find another love and live my life the way it seems I’m destined to, I have this terrible feeling that I will probably still wake up next to my future wife in a cold sweat with one sentence on my lips.

“I’ll always love you, I’m just not in love with you anymore.”

Wind

The pure white snow fell outside without reason; earlier in the day it had been nearly 65 degrees out and was the windiest day I could remember. The kind of wind that you were sure could and would lift you off your feet and take you to some distant place if you weren’t careful.

“If only I was a little lighter. Just a few pounds and I’d be floating away to somewhere where life makes sense.”

I’d never really wished to be spirited away by the wind before, but in reality I’ve known the feeling my entire life. As if the wind was it’s own life force, whipping through the valley picking up who it decided was ready to go to wherever it ends up; something like the way Dorthy must have felt about somewhere over the rainbow.

It’s funny how childhood thoughts and dreams creep back into your adult mind when you least expect it. Standing outside at work in the wind and warm weather, the wind picked up so much that I was sure I was being chosen. I was the lucky one today. So long suckers, I’m out of here. Sadly the wind died down, like it always does and left me standing exactly where I was before.

I’d like to think that maybe a piece of myself was carried away in the wind that day. That maybe somehow the worst little broken parts are living in their paradises, where ever the wind ends. Living in what I once thought was my own paradise but would actually be my own personal hell. All the worst bits living in some strange broken world, where only our character flaws and insecurities can thrive. I’d like to think that was all true but in my heart I know it’s not. I know I’m just as broken now as I was before the wind touched my face. I know that no matter how much I want to believe that wind can somehow either carry us through the sky to some better place, somewhere peaceful, or even just the things about ourselves we could truly live without; I know it just can’t happen. I know that life is not the stuff of dreams, nor will it ever be.

“There’s no depth in happiness.”

I sit here trying to think of something to write; something of value. I was recently told that my writing is a “de-motivator”. I’m not sure that’s my goal or mission here but I can see where they were coming from. I don’t necessarily mean to be a sad person or a downer but I guess writing here is about as close to a journal I’ve got. I read an interview once where some musician said that the reason that sad songs were always so much more popular and usually remembered longer is that there is no depth in happiness. I agree with that. I had a discussion with my Dad about it and he had a different point of view, that it wasn’t so much an apparent shallowness in happiness but that when you are happy you usually don’t want to sit down and write about it. I don’t think there’s a term like “wallowing in happiness”.

I do have happiness in my life, contrary to popular belief. I don’t express it much, and I guess the reason is that when I’m happy I don’t go out of my way to tell anyone about it. I don’t spend those few and far between moments of joy in front of my computer screen trying to think of ways to write down how excited with life I am. I am going to try to work on this though. I’ve recently been going back over my older posts reading some of my short stories and “life-glimpses” and I was not so surprised to find that after I had read them I wasn’t exactly the most joyful person alive. The realization I’ve come to is that the world is a sad enough place without my sappy swill. From now on it will be at least half and half, or at least I’m going to try to write down some of the more joyful times and personal victories in my life.

I hope that the few people who read what I have to say will enjoy it and maybe not worry about my sanity, at least half as much as they do already.