Backseat epiphanies

I think most days are the same. The blank pages are new every day and my wounds from yesterday's emptiness would not have even healed yet. I take some time only to realize that it is time that takes my life from me. If it were not for hate, my heart would be empty. Maybe, almost empty.

I want to go back. Afternoon bike rides. Sunday beaches. Midnight burgers. Grade school dreams. The first time of anything beautiful. But I always knew, even back then, that it wouldn't be easy. And isn't this the fight I've always wanted? I just didn't expect to grow up into such a coward.

So many intangibles to the dream that begs not to be forgotten. Only a vague image, a mere whisper of better things that could come. I wouldn't know what it would look like, but I think I'd know what it's suppose to feel like. But is that enough to go on? Too many are the realities that destroy a soul. Too many.

But as I still draw breath, I know these hauntings will not leave me. When tomorrow will come, I am almost certain that my sins would be heavy. When that happens, I am not sure if what I would want is forgiveness or forgetting. And they are not the same.

....

"A person is smart, but people are stupid."

The night is calling

It hits me hard. Waking up at 4am, I feel a sudden surge of loneliness. A familiar kind of loneliness. The old wolf is at the door. It bares it's teeth laughing at me, at my callous hands, at my conflicted psyche, and it asks- What are you doing here?

I see the light just outside the room. I want to run to it before the day reclaims the truths of my night. There are voices that whisper my guilt. My mistress is seductive, if only because
her arms are shallow but always wanting. She smiles, confident I will always return to her, then asks - Isn't this who you are?

People will always be your cage if you let them. It is your curse. The old wolf glares knowingly as it tells me this. It sounds so unfair that it must be true. But I am free, if I want to be. I can roam the open roads and take my life. I don't have to be here. I do not have to wait for their understanding. They cannot change, and neither can I. And we are not the same. So I ask, why do I try?

The night is calling. I cannot deny it for too long. It is who I am. Better to be the wandering homeless than the comforted hopeless.

....

"Not all who wander are lost."

The noise in my head

I used to think that I was the type to be satisfied with the simple things. These days, it's not so simple to determine what exactly is satisfying anymore. Over time, you learn to eye things with a certain feel of distrust . The elusiveness of a dream, the fleeting quality of happy moments, and the fragile nature of everything good in this lifetime all make us weary and suspicious of trying at all.

I have greatly considered that my problem is not with the way things are but with the way people are (myself included). Afterall, "Things don't change, but people do." Maybe things are still as simple as they can be but people have become too complicated for their own good. And oh how stupidly complicated we can become. So tangled are we in a mess of dreams, jeaousy, hate, envy, hope and the oh so overused "love". For all of us, the romancing of the angels and demons in our heads would be enough to complicate our lifetime and more.

There are times when I watch a movie wherein the main conflict involves the risk of losing one's "humanity", inside I hear myself laugh at our reverence for that word, as if it was actually a good thing. If humanity means anything, it is inconsistency. Our capacity for knowledge is only surpassed by our penchant to choose the exact opposite of what wisdom might dictate; our basic desires always keep our noble aspirations in check. We are not merely creatures of survival but creatures of war; with ourselves, with each other and with everything else. We are on the top and bottom of our own food chain.

Thinking about it, I wonder if there really is such a thing as human progress. Sure on a technological aspect that may be, but the essential question is not what tool the hand holds, but what kind of hand holds the tool. And if that point would hold true, then the fact that the tool changes is of no real consequence as to whether the user of the tool changes.

On the rare occasions I step out of my door to try and experience life once again, I realize it is quite a futile attempt if at first I do not step out of the doors within my own head. We hold ourselves prisoners, with almost arguably no chance of freedom without outside intervention. I have to find some way to get my mind right. I have to try. But I confess that these days I don't even think I want to, or even know if I should. But I do have some faith in a part of me, or rather a memory of me. That somehow, not so long ago, there was a person who believed in a few things worthy of some semblance of strength. He was a better man. I know it. And on this note, it may be wiser to live by the things he believed in than to be... whatever it is I am now.

....

"I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better." - George Lichtenburg

Round 2

I kept telling myself that today I was going to put up a fight, and I wasn't going to be beaten. I kept thinking I just have to keep going forward, just keep breathing. I need to know that there is more in me than what my muscles can give me. That there's more in me yet, despite all the quiet dying. I needed something in me to hurt, quite badly. Sometimes, it's the only way to know you're alive.

Too much gone, too easily. But not today. Not today.

Today. I will win.

A small victory, but I will take it nonetheless.

....

"If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong." -Charles Kettering

The unsent

I am tired.

How many ways can a man die? How many of his parts can be killed until it is called the whole? How many lies can one soul stomach until it screams out it's despair and suffocation?

Maybe it's better this way. No more of my broken promises. No more waiting for a change. No more hopes to be better. The silence in its own time will be a good enough goodbye.

They will understand as I do, that life goes on.

....

"All change is not growth; as all movement is not forward." -Ellen Glasgow

He was on the edge. I didn't know what to tell him. Looking down, I saw that it was quite a view, beautiful and inviting. And for a moment, I understood. So this is where broken hearts go 3am in the morning.

I used to believe in saving lives. Now I am resigned to the idea that lives simply play out based on our decisions and things we cannot control. The truths I know might not be the truths anyone wants to hear. The things people have to do might not be the things they can do. I can talk about freedom and dreams, but that would just make things harder. There is a pain in empty spaces that cannot be filled with words...well, at least none of the words I know. There is a longing, a whisper of things that might not be for this lifetime. There is waiting that could just as easily be a slow breaking. There are beautiful things you'd wish you never knew; it just makes the shadows of the world a little darker and the lies a little more cruel. I wish I could say, tomorrow would be a better day. But that's one thing among many others that I can't guarantee. I know, I really do...in your heart and mine, we just want to be set free. I'm sorry that no one would ever really know who you are. Maybe they'll miss you, the parts they knew, the parts they thought they saw. I wish I could say that someday people will finally understand. But I don't really know. I'm sorry if you've ever come to the thought that the love you found in this world was not enough, I really am.

I left him there, standing on the edge. Either way, I already knew...that somebody already died that night.

....

"How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light."

-Barry Lopez

I try so hard to find my words for you to the tune of yellow.
This love began with crowded halls and orange street lamp witnesses.
Easily untangling from non beginnings and half spoken intentions,
the years went by in quiet protest to the wanderings of broken hearts.

Beneath the stars and skies singing with lights, I made my promise.
I recognize this moment, these passing fleeting memories are my eternity.
I know this feeling, of truths no matter how meek are undeniable,
and I already know...

I'm hers, by her side or in her dreams. She is mine, in this city or the next; and wherever my travels will take me, I will come back to her inevitably. She is the quiet in which my heart can sleep.

....

"Whether humanity will consciously follow the law of love, I do not know. But that need not disturb me. The law will work just as the law of gravitation works, whether we accept it or not. The person who discovered the law of love was a far greater scientist than any of our modern scientists. Only our explorations have not gone far enough and so it is not possible for everyone t0 see all its workings." -Mohandas Ghandi