Wonderwall

Originally Posted: 2/4/08

Somewhere inside me something has ruptured, and whatever its spilling into my body isn't blood. Its cold and corrosive and, if I didn't know better, I'd say that fluid is coming from somewhere in my chest. Mayhap its what has kept my heart beating for so long, when it obviously should have shut down a long time ago. Not to say I'm heartless, that would be...a lie. What I'm saying is, the organ should have died sometime in my senior year of high school. I've put too much poison in myself for it to survive.

Things are rough, and I'm not sure where I want to be. Who, I want to be for that matter. So many options and with each one comes broken hearts, tears, and too many sleepless nights. At any rate, its all the same. It just comes down to a game of Who Do I Hurt More. Money isn't there, and whether I pray for it or suck dick for it, it probably never will be there. Maybe those ideals of success were just that. Ideals, and hopelessly optimistic ones. Not the same hopeless as, say a "hopeless romantic". I mean, quite literally, without hope. How does one combat Fate? Death? These are the enemies I've chosen in the field, and I could have asked for no greater foes had I chosen to scale Olympus and fight Zeus.

That might be melodramatic, or it might not. Either way, it comes from my fingertips. I think I've fallen into one of those...moods. Those days that occur with alarming frequency where all I really want to do is crawl back through time and fix all the things I did wrong. Not the things I had no choice in, just the times where I made the wrong choices. There are enough of those to last me a good while. Maybe I'd be worse off if I hadn't chosen someone who'd proven time and again to be unstable, domineering, and manipulative over...uh, the rest of the world. Somehow, I've got to look back and doubt that. Sure, she helped me kick those nasty drug habits and the rampant alchoholism, but she was only a catalyst in something that was bound to happen, and the sacrifices were just too great. Fairness isn't something I often expect life to deal me, but that one time would have been enough.

Even if I'd only chosen one other person over her. I swear, it would have been enough.

Granted, I've got precious few regrets. Anyone who says they live with no regrets is, frankly, still a child. Grow up, mature a few years, and you'll realize how many things you've done wrong. Its part of being human. We make stupid decisions, sometimes because we're too blind, sometimes because we're high, and sometimes our dicks lead us into things we probably would have avoided with a level head. I know that one pretty well myself.

The real measure of it, is how much you would change. Would I have abandoned those ideals of going to college, getting a decent job that allowed me a certain degree of financial freedom and time to work on my passions? Not for the world. Would I give up my relationship with Tanya for something I missed out on years ago because my pride, my libido, and my stubborn fucking will took me in a direction I was never meant to go? No, I wouldn't. But god damn I'd kill to have a few more real friends around. Friends who looked at me, like she did, and saw that behind these eyes was something the world would never see. Something reserved for a few.

I grow tired of people who claim to love me, who claim to be my friends, who claim this and that and all manner of ridiculous things and in the end...don't know much more than my name. Oh sure, I'm funny. Sure, I've got a twisted humor, I'm dependable, I'll be there for you when you need me, regardless of what you need, and I've come out of my shell quite a bit in the past few years. But what else can you tell me? Can you tell me why I refuse to fly? Why I abhor seafood? Why the idea of someone striking a woman makes me furious beyond words? Why I will defend my friends, my dearest friends, as if they were my blood? Can you tell me what the fuck my favorite color is? My favorite band? Can you tell me why my most predominant emotions are always, have always been, love and rage? And why those emotions are carefully held in check?

No. You can't. Because you're friends with a ideal of me, an image of me that you've projected onto the real one. Not because the guy sitting here writing this is so dark and awful you can't look at him, but because these people I surround myself with are so shallow, so two-fucking-dimensional that I find it hard to beleive their real sometimes. They don't listen when I speak, they don't pay attention when they should. They expect me to tell them everything when they want to know it, regardless of whether I want to talk or not.

Well, guess what? I'm not a robot. I don't have the answers when you want them in terms you can understand. I never have, and I never will. So if you love me so much, I guess you'd better start figuring out who you're really in love with, because it isn't me. If, that is, you know what love actually means. My friends, my dearest friends, have all found out the hard way. Maybe its time you did too.

I'm the guy who would drop everything, everything and drive twelve hours to see you because you need someone to be around. The guy who can scarcely recall the world's lowest form of shit beating his mother senseless over nothing, and feels that same overwhelming anger at the thought of someone doing the same to anyone. I'm the guy who drives everywhere because flying scares the shit out of him, but the thought of flying on a dragon is thrilling beyond comprehension. I smoke too much because it helps me think, helps me focus on what I'm doing and where I am, rather than the worlds I create and the people I kill to save them. I listen to my music too loudly, because I firmly beleive that everyone should. Because music is too beautiful to be left in the background. I write stupid poems and send 400 Hershey Kisses in the mail because it will make someone smile. I gave up doing things because I was obligated. Now I do things because I want to. Because the thought of making someone smile is more important to me than anything in the world.

I'm a good man. I do asshole things sometimes, more by my own stupid lapses in judgment than anything else. I can be a prick, but not without feeling bad later. Most of the time. I can restrain myself under any circumstance, control every impulse and every desire. Or I can let them drag me along. I feel in extremes, and I'm not ashamed to admit that.

These are the things that those people who know me have always seen. These things and more, some of which I can't put into words, because some aspects of a real human being can't be written down, or spoken, or understood in any language that this world has given birth to.

To those people, the ones that have never forgotten me, the ones that have embraced me for who I am from the start, I owe a great debt. If I could change things, I would in a heartbeat because I've lost more than a couple of you over the years. Right now, though, I can only say thank you because I truly beleive that you've been my salvation in all of this.

My deepest gratitude and all my love,
S. R.