Sunday, September 07, 2008

Another Day...


Today is Sunday and I, willfully, did not go to church. There. I said it. I'm a creature of habit that has lost any connection to the routine that has marked its life for so long. Where is life alert when you need it? I'm tired of pretending, of being the knight in gilded armor in little, unimportant, ways. Few know how draining it is to smile and nod and grin when everything within you wants to be frank and honest. Why must I be stuck with caring, picking up where others have dropped anything they could stand to gesticulate? I have so much stored inside that my dreams have become an inadequate release valve; they've given up, and apparently convinced sleep to follow suit. I wish to God they'd return.

For so long I've been the go to guy for things. My life has been made up perpetual layers of falsities; my personality has become malleable to the point that it always lacks any definite shape, and that disturbs me to no end. I can befriend anyone; make people smile; be attractive; be seductive; seem clueless; seem helpless. But, when it all comes down to it, I have a hard time being me, for I am all and none of these things.

Why can I not just be me anymore? I want to make love just as much as the next person does. Why is that so bad? It's gotten to the point where refraining from swearing is something that I do more so out of habit than reverence. I don't sleep with random people because I'm picky not because I'm fearful of some precipitous decent into the nether regions of post-humus existence.

Still, there are always people to worry about. I know when they're lying to me; I know when they're insecure. I can tell from the tone of their voice how their day has been, and I know when their hiding the screaming, raging, daemons inside. People never expect you to be perceptive, though they secretly wish you would be. It's taken me twenty-two years to realize that. Now, I know why I'm always so socially awkward: I get glimpses of emotions and can't shake them quick enough. I guess it's always been that way.

I need a vacation.

2 comments:

Drea said...

So I read this, then tried to sleep about an hour later. After some time had passed I realized I wasn't sleep because I was having a conversation with you in my head (like you could hear or respond) and since it was one-sided it had no ending. Either way, the general gist of the conversation (or at least the half that I could be responsible for) was this: There are some people in the world you will meet who will need you to be a certain person for them. That person may not be who you normally are, or who you are entirely, but there is something in them that you are perceptive enough to see... and what they need you can give them. Then there are the others, who don't need but will take if available, or who don't know to look past the surface for the "actual" person beneath the smiles and socially acceptable wit. They aren't worth it, and you know it. You need the people who can handle the you that you can handle. So when you lose the you that you can handle, take a break from the people who made the "real" person confused at their self-identity in the first place, cause Lord knows you gotta deal with you for more hours of the day than you gotta deal with them. Or at least all these things were true for me, something I discovered after I cried myself to sleep for almost a year. All I know is, I'm in it with you because I know that I can't lose the definite shape of your "self" that I've come to love.

By the way, I'm mad at the "I've fallen and I can't get up!" link! You're such a mess!

Anonymous said...

lol this was great. glad to see that someone feels as fungible as i do. i used to think of myself as fickle. now i've decided, appropriately just for the moment, that more or less, i am transitory. think life is just a series of moments and who we are may not be who we were just a moment prior, or who we will be just a moment later. i think it's people's dependencies on us that ties us to moments in the past (even if we want desperately to free ourselves from there shackles, or long desperately to be reawakened exactly in a moment that transpired a year ago) one way or another, moment to moment we are changed.

from a legal stand point? habits are everything and nothing. kinda like a dream. a propensity. it happened but what it means is solely at our own discretion as is whether it happens again.

oh life for the introspective is an arduous one. but likeminded thinkers make it worth the journey.

p.s. blogspot = vacation on the graduate student's budget lol

best of luck this semester.