Keeping Myself Alive

Of all the myriad things that make me murderously angry, being told how to live is the foremost. I understand my lifestyle doesn't suit everyone. The 70-80 hour workweek, the hours of solitary writing. The drinking. The banjo. The Xbox. I get it. My friends are mostly settling down or settled down. Most of them are married, or raising children, or both. Even my siblings have mostly grown into their adult lives. Me? I'm single. I'm living at home. I'm paying off my debts and spending the rest of my money going out and spending time with my friends. In short, I'm happy. If you think you know some way I could be happier, by all means suggest it to me.

But if you think the way I've chosen to live is in some way invalid, inappropriate, or incorrect, kindly go fuck yourself.

If I wanted advice, I would ask for it. If I wanted a girlfriend, I'd find one. Truth is, the older I get the more I think that life isn't for me. I'm too self-involved, too into my writing and my music and my free time. I like having the freedom to do whatever I want at practically any time. I don't need to share myself with someone, and that works just fine for me. I have friends. This small, beautiful handful of indescribably incredible people that are everything I could ask for and then some. Part friend, part lover, part companion, part sidekick, part superhero. There's laughter in these relationships like nothing I've ever known. There's support and comaraderie and sex and passion and alchohol and conflict and, above all, there's love. This vast, unfathomable thing that occasionally slams into the chest and leaves you gasping, clawing at the air as if it will help replenish the breath that was forced from your lungs. What is having a partner all about if not those things? And I have them, almost a dozen times over I have them. People get used to how intense a relationship with me can be or they quickly decide not to be my friend. That's it.

I'd like to change some things here and there, and I'm moving toward doing that, but I'm doing it because I want to. Because it will make me feel good. I don't need to compromise because I'm  taking someone else's feelings, or goals, or capabilities into account. I don't need to worry about that. I can be impulsive. I can make my lists of pros and cons. I can go either way I want, because at the end of the day its my decision.

Likewise, if you don't care for the people I've surrounded myself with, you can see your way out any time. I don't judge you based on the people in your life, please refrain from doing that to me. Or, most assuredly, I'll fucking kill you. I'm self-involved, like I said, but those people are, everyone, important to me. And before you spit any kind of poison their way, think about how hard it will be to run your mouth with no teeth left in it. If that's not a deterrent, I'm sure we could peel your eyelids back and show you one.

I'm a private person, by nature, so the fact that I've allowed you to get close to me should be an indication. It should indicate that maybe, just maybe, you're not the only one I saw some worth in. That maybe those other people in my circle are beyond your need to judge and defame. If you're not in that circle, well, now maybe you have some idea about the cause.

Either way, the point of this was mostly a reassurance. I'm happy. Really, I'm more content than I have been in quite some time. If that doesn't show, I apologize. And if that doesn't suit you, well, fuck you.

Gloriously Yours,
-S.R.

Break-Up Letters (Part One)

Dry-heaving melodies, I'm singing you to sleep. I'm retching with the wretched in the faint glow of the streetlight. Torrid and tormenting echoes of lamenting all the nights I spent reflecting shadows of myself. Sometimes I wonder if you ever saw my face. Those charming, twisted cocaine grins that hooked in your blood vessels an created and addiction, those were never really meant for us, just byproducts of my condition.

I seek to slake my thirst and then I spiral toward the worst and sheathe myself with nimble words and softly spoken verse. You curse, a plume of icy breath escapes you, churning as it dissipates in the January air. I remember that last snowfall clinging jealously in dark brown hair. I spat your curses back at you and swallowed twice their number, then weaned myself with venom and awoke midway through summer. You were just a ghost by then, your spirit all but broken. The facets in your diamond eyes are splintered, cracked, and hopeless.

You scattered your ashes in the leeward wind and left me in the mountains. You dipped your crimson lips, I thought, to kiss, and tore my larynx out. You slit my gut and peeled away the flesh and forced your fingers in, to dine on the divine and be reminded of your wilting sins, to drip my blood into your throat, to see me smitten, spitted, spitting, spinning, grinning shit. Follow the pulsing in my veins to where they all collide. I will be a meal for you, but only one more time. So take this little heart of mine and feast, but make it last.

For when next you want a piece of me, you'll have to eat my ass.

Yours,
-S.R.