When Darkness finds me

I can feel you. 

You don't have to shout any louder, run any faster, be any heavier or any more anything, not even lesser. I can see you from the corner of my eye and sense you with every beat of my heart, creeping towards me. 

Your grey vapours only chase me harder when I run so I chose, this time, to brave your wrath, to cross my fingers and wait for you to pass me by. 

I chose to believe the false promises I made myself and I chose to believe the false comfort every disconnected whisper offered me because I was hiding from you in plain sight. I was hiding from the person you are conjured up by the recesses in my mind not deep enough to keep me safe.

I hate that you caught up. I hate that you chose the brightest day, in a room most filled with love in a voice I cherish deeply to wrap your vapourous trail around me and inch your way up to my mind while I stood paralysed- without even a whimper in self defense.

You know your own ugliness. 

You know I will succumb to the power you have over me. You enjoy the chase and it was longer this time than ever before. I didn't miss you. Not one bit. If I could wish you away I would. I let myself believe that is all it would take but you have proved me wrong. I will congratulate you on your victory, ever the graceful loser. You have taught me from practice, I will even thank you, gratitude flowing out of the wounds you stab into me. 

I wonder if this will be my last memory of these months in the rainbow. I stand here immobilized by the crushing weight of the knowledge you bring. 

You call it the truth and I want to believe you but it is difficult to have my mind reconstruct reality to suit a whim while you are twisting your knife deeper into my heart making sure I can see you through the haze of tears I won't shed from pride.

After all that I have sacrificed- laughing little floaty bubbles and flitting through reality, my pride is all I have and if you asked nicely I'm sure I would give you that too, but not while you suffocate me and watch me bleed out so clinically. 

It won't do. I won't give you that satisfaction, not because I don't want to- for you I would give anything, but because my pride is the only oxygen I will find in the dark lonely grave you have dug for me.

I will dream of flight and wine and dancing and sleep through the worst of this. I will wake up in another season having befriended my nightmares again. Companionship more reliable than your promised smiles in the dark- I am blind.

Because mornings are clearer

This was an e-mail I received. Yes he is fine (I checked) but I wanted to share this here because I can't find my own words today.

i wanted to write this on a public blog (or facebook notes or whatever) but i decided not to, though i am drunk. in fact, i was too ashamed so i am writing to you in person

it's so tempting for me to write '[FADE IN]' here but i will not because i like to believe this is serious. AND resist my film-maker's instinct or wanna-be filmmaker's instinct rather.

i see her online right now and i wanna ping but i decide not to. there was a time when she wanted me to be something that i refused to be. it was more material than emotional - like having a job, making money et al. hence i refused. OR may be that was just an excuse. i did not do what she wanted me to because i was too lazy. or because i wasn't good enough.

looking back, after a few years, i think she was right. or at least her advice was. i feel like a loser right now because i DID NOT listen to her. i should have been what she wanted me to be. i would have been happily married with kids and money and whatever if only i did listen.

i always thought my life was gonna be perfect - like since i was a kid. with a dream job, love of my life, a super awesome home with remote-controlled electronic appliances, lots of money to throw away, people to look up to me etc. i do have the maturity to accept that not everything we wish for happens. but not even one single wish? seriously? how the fuck am i supposed to believe in god then? or screw god, how am i supposed to go on with life?

I DO NOT KNOW.

that makes me feel like an immature IDIOT and i don't like it. but in the end it doesn't even matter, does it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVTXPUF4Oz4

yes, i was a fan of LP in my early years. still am, secretly

doesn't make sense, does it? that how nights are. mornings are better & clearer.

GOOD NIGHT!

Some days

Some days I wake up convinced I will be fine.

I'm woken up by the ring of my alarm instead of another dream of you. I'm chained to no memories- not good nor bad. My clothes- washed over and over again since you last saw them, bare no smell of you on this morning. I don't feel the phantom of your touch every time I feel the wind on my skin nor hear your sigh in every rustle of leaves.

I know for certain on days like this that I will be fine; that it will get better. I have reason to believe that with time I will find every shard of my crushed soul and glue it together transforming into somebody more breathtaking and complete than you ever knew.

On days like these I'm told there's a skip in my step and a tune to my laugh.Nobody asks about the colour of my eyes or why I won't smile. They ask instead of my childhood- whether I climbed trees and pulled pranks. I laugh in response, my love for the universe bursting out of every pore of my being- gratitude for the many gifts I have received that I haven't earned, the many opportunities that seemed gift wrapped with my name on the label. The world is perfect under the bandage I've plastered on and I feel the mile deep gashes in my soul begin the slow process of healing.

Just as I settle into my peace, a corner of my mind unlocks- I see an image of the inevitable future. A future I want with all my heart for you to have of happiness, success, joy and most of all, of peace. I see that future without me and that isn't what reminds me I will never heal, it is seeing somebody else in every dream we shared. And so I begin again, from the very bottom, tying again to forget, not hope, not believe and to stop praying to Gods who won't listen anyway.
---

I'm listening to Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd

Sadness

When my heart is cracked and bleeding, a rainbow forms in the sky. You look at it and smile not knowing the pain that painted the sky.
When I cry, big drops of rain quench the thirsty, baked red mud and little children run out from under tin shades to dance with smiles.

I will be happy again and the sun will shine again. It will happen but not soon.

Fear

I wonder what it is like to live in fear, to bind yourself  to that devil and make it you. How do you cope with every day knowing no decision you make fearlessly is even worthy of discussion? How do you cope with being so scared of your own thoughts that you won;t say them out loud?

I want to pity you. 

I want to teach you to be brave. I want you to love every thought of yours like I do. To be brave for the person you are. To encourage your honesty. To teach you the exhilaration in fighting a battle you believe in. The independence in believing in your decisions.

I loaned you my wings to fly but you lost them in your paralyzing fear. Now I don’t fly either and you’re sorry.

You sacrificed me to your fears and in my mind I’m now dead. In yours my throat is slit a million times with every apology you don’t mean. 

I want to wish you unhappiness but I can’t. I don’t know what is more foolish, your fear of everything or my all consuming love for a weakling. Your fears have shattered my world as much as my bravery has alienated me from everybody. I spent my whole life waiting and now I don't have wings. 

I wish I could live without hope, it would be less painful if I didn't hope you would gather your courage and find my wings.

Magic bus

In a comforting world there would be a midnight bus; A bus for the broken, lonely and dispirited. The bus would have no destination it would invite neither conversation nor silence. Nobody would compete, not for the happiest nor saddest, nor bravest stories. We would drive around and around knowing we are united among strangers; That heart break and sadness are not lonely, inescapable little cages.

I would like to think that it would be a magic bus. An open top bust that will let you see the stars through your tears, magical because no matter where you are it will always feel 12 degrees Celsius  You could wear a sweater , hold yourself, maybe cry into your sleeve and believe what you will.

I would wear my hair down, find the darkest spot and wrap my oldest shawl around me. I'd snuggle into my shoes and cry as though it were raining. I'd carry some music, the kind of music I'm too scared to listen to on a regular day because of the truth in the writer's sadness. Maybe I'd whisper along. I would love my sadness on this magic bus, I would know it's a part of who I am. I wouldn't need to find excuses then and we would all drive round and around for hours until we stopped counting. I wouldn't carry a phone, or maybe the magic bus would jam all signals.

Airports are much like my magic bus. Everything is temporary- A collection of strangers who don't belong, so much left incomplete.

Conversations with myself

“Is it amusing to be unloved?” you ask, a sneer lighting up the depths of your soul. I look around me, I look around us; I feel the glory of the morning sun on my skin- I wonder at the beauty of the world and wonder what gave birth to the cruelty in your eyes. 

I’m tempted to ask what it feels like to be so vile but I guess the answer before I speak the words and walk away having lost my voice to the wonder that is your callous spite. I can hear you laugh your crooked laugh at the knife you twist in my soul and I catch on to the tune in you and can’t help but laugh too.

Is it amusing to be unloved you ask, I’m tempted to answer you. To tell you of all my thoughts and all my dreams to even speak aloud of your nightmares that my reality is. I’m tempted to tell you the person I see in you but I can’t rip your world apart as you do mine. I have neither the effortless guile nor the festering venom in me to rob you of your illusion.

I wish you well. I wish you glory. I don’t wish you the destiny you deserve but the one you dream of because I know that with your cruel beady eyes and crooked loud laugh you will never be strong enough to survive the world you make. 

Wishing on a black hole

There are some days you most force yourself to smile and learn to believe the lie you tell yourself. When you will dance and tell yourself a happy story while inside you feel as broken as a chewed rag doll;
On others days, like today, you do better taking a hammer to your heart, shattering yourself into a million, scattered, pieces that can never be joined again.
On days like today you cry yourself to sleep and wake up knowing nothing but a vast emptiness that will never be filled. A void so great, it will eat into what is left of the facade that is your life. You wish on a star for a numbness that will stop the pain.
You will tell yourself that the happy memories, so vivid, were never real. That it wasn't you walking on the clouds and singing with the birds; that it never happened, that every memory with a smile is only as true as fairy tales and make believe knights, from when you were young.
On some days, like today, you wish you were never happy and never found music and literature that reflected your happiness, had never known what it was like to feel happiness. You wish to erase, as neatly as words on paper, every shared secret, every shared laugh. You wish it never existed and that your only true friend, sorrow, was never left unattended, was seen with less scorn.

What is funny though, is that the more you wish it, the less likely it is that your wish will be fulfilled.

-------------
Song of the moment: Silence and Dante's quote  (I'm paraphrasing): There is no greater sorrow than remembering, in misery, when you were happy.

My stamp collection

I woke up to the realisation, today, that I am crowded by people.
I know lots and lots of people, lots and lots of people know me too. Some of those people like me, a lot of them are related to me and there are more than I can count who hate me. All of that totals to knowing a lot of people.

Yet, I feel alone.

I don't feel the kind of alone that is tranquil; This is the kind of alone where you scream and nobody will hear you. Perhaps what I can finally see is that when scream nobody will care.

I used to know people who would talk to me and whom I could talk to. I collected confidences as a child collects stamps- some rare and exquisite, most simply to feel a purpose. I would meticulously collect them and file them away making contact to let their energies flow into me in my most private hours.

Over time have felt more lost and alone.
I wanted different things, I abandoned my once prized collection. I chased dreams that weren't mine to live. I return now to old friends and find my neglected collection a confusion. The sequences are lost and I open my book staring at strangers. I feel muted by the faces my mind's eye sees, I feel deaf and numb to the stories I once so meticulously laboured over. In panic I scream endlessly to be heard and yet, I see faces, once loved, drift by sporting masks of shock and annoyance, sometimes sympathy but never, anymore, of companionship.

It is lonely staring at an empty book once so full, so familiar.

-------
Listening (in my mind's ears) to Buckets of Rain- Bob Dylan