At this point, there’s no point in circling the squares. 

I feel what I feel and I will lavish in the waves that overcome me. Some rinse. Some drown. All overpower. 

And in the end, I’m only a fly basking in the sun. 

Curated. Pompous and rinsed. I somehow (or on purpose) wrestle with my duality in a dimly lit room after accidentally stumbling into this lonely awareness: never really here, only quieted by the stories of other people. 

Sure, I see those lives as vivid and as a brightly filtered HD photos and I’ve lived long enough to recognize that you have to record the lie to belay the emptiness. 

Instead, I steadily poison myself with hope and cynicism in shakily unequal parts because if I can’t shout to an empty room or whisper softly to a noisy crowd, well, then who am I other than Jack’s Colored Sensory Deprivation? 

Fuck violence. I want silence. And a deeper grave than six wholesome feet. Cats and dogs can dig deeper with motivation, and humans will do worse. For less. 

 I feel like there’s an obligation to acknowledge: you don’t get drunk and drag the lake. 

That being said, I’ve hired emotional divers and I’m paying OT. 

That’s the full disclosure, braille-reader. 

I spend cold nights feeling my toes get frostbite and hearing the thunder of airplanes taking off while slowly the creeping reality spreads like a wasting disease in my brain. It can’t rain enough to make up the difference. And still I play it like my compartments are sectioned off better than the archives in Indiana Jones. I feel. It’s not great and now that I’m allowing myself moments of reflection, I feel. The routines and grooves I dug into life are hard to forget. I took a lot, too much, for granted and found myself miserable before being thankful. Maybe it should be that I instead just count myself lucky, but I’m sitting still and thinking of the pieces that I’ve lost and sighing heavily. 

It hurts. And I realize that it is necessary and the way is open and honest and in the best of emotional circumstances, but I don’t have to like it. I just have to live with it and grow from the experience. But this is something I will carry with me until I die. Hopefully, the weight isn’t too much. 

 It doesn’t feel good or cathartic. 

I don’t feel hopeful or relieved. 

It feels like failing and falling from higher up, hitting things along the way. 

But I understand that this is how it has to be. This is how we go forward. 

It hurts. I’m not happy. But I will be okay. 

 Hollowed out and crushed. 

I think that’s a good way to put it. Doesn’t mean that all is lost, just that there’s not much else to give without being filled back up. 

The important thing, to be clear, is that I still exist. And that’s a powerful thing to take away. 

 One of the worst feelings: wanting something so bad for so long only to have it break before it’s finished. 

Optimism is just shooting yourself in the foot, but closing your eyes first. 

 I have waves. 

I am a pendulum. 

Good days. 

Bad days. All with an ebb and flow. 

But, lately, I feel like an oil slick has crept over my surface I no longer feel the warm reflection of the sun. 

I guess this is decent metaphor for depression.