Today I woke up with that burn behind and on the fronts of my eyes; a burn that only follows a night of not-enough-sleep. The burn persists: it won’t for the life of me leave me alone. Then it’s rushing out into a car to drive three hours, just so I can take off again for another hour and a half so I can arrive home and make due for a couple more weeks until I’m back at home, surrounded by the few familiar faces I have left. There are faces here that my mind recognizes, that my personality stimulates, that are friends, even though they’re still so unfamiliar to me. And I love those people, they’re all so nice to me and it is very nice to have such friendliness to surround me. Like a puff of smoke, filling the air around my face, they become an environment I neither love, nor hate.
Still, the burning in my eyes persist and I’m looking out the car window, looking up into the dark sky full of clouds; but the sky is bright, not dark; and the clouds are bland. I’m feeling very empty. I’ve lost something, but my phone, wallet, iPod, backpack, are all sitting in front of me in the floor of the car. So what’s missing?
It’s my sense of existence. I feel so miniscule that I am meaningless among everyone and everything: friends, strangers, trees, the wind. All things come before me. I’m not a slave, chained to a fence, but I’m not free. Something is restricting me, taking away from my soul (if those are real), eating at my eyes and robbing my mind. Is it my lack of God? Ever since I revoked my beliefs earlier on, I’ve felt this odd sense of emptiness; this almost irritating persistence of uncomforting emotional unbalance and unstable mindset. A whole lot of un’s. My life has become a giant un, it seems. Unhappiness: but also, unsadness. Unexcitement and unfamiliarity. Is anything right anymore? Is anything actually happening around me? How can it if I do not exist? What if none of us exist?
This isn’t philisophocal bullshit. This isn’t me trying to cope with the question of philosophers past. People always assume that when someone is trying to explain their existence, they’re trying to be prestigious. Why can’t someone try to find their place without being coined a term?
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about love. Love is probably one of the most fascinating things to me. Does it even exist? Maybe it’s like the rest of us. But anyways, it’s interesting. It comes in many forms, but it is unshapeable. Another un. So; I am destined to fall in love: two un’s are meant to be. Maybe I’ll fall in love with some who is unconfident, or understanding. Not that I believe in fate completely. Nature doesn’t have a pre-determined path, it is what we make it. Love makes it beautiful. But love also makes it ugly, uglier than anything. As humans, we love, but we don’t know why we love, or how we love. It bothers me that I don’t have it; this golden cow, this idol of all men, this untouchable gift from the heavens (I only joke), I do not have it. Hey look, another un. Maybe I’ll have it sooner than I think. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe there is a God and he will send me into a life of lovelessness and despair; a punishment as well as a reward, because with no love comes no loss, but without love comes depression and a feeling of isolation.
There is this girl I know; this girl who I think might actually understand me if I spoke to her more openly. I’m a lock without a key so she’ll never get inside my secure heart unless I break that lock and spill it over her. Shower her in broken dreams, broken promises, unexplainable feelings, unwanted memories, some of them figures of my imagination. Maybe she could decipher my dreams, and pick them apart and tell me why I dream of her. Is it because she is beautiful? But then again, how many think that word suits her? Because I sure do, and I would gladly use it at any time to let her know I think so. But that is a lie, because I fear her: her rejection, and losing her friendship (which is already running thin). I’ve no initiative: for fear has grabbed my steering wheel and brought me to this road I didn’t want to take (Robert Frost would understand). I’m lost in a world of Huxley: where did we go wrong? Or, to be more correct: Where did I go wrong? I feel this is more my fault than our fault collectively (whoever we are). I guess to sum it up, this girl has taken a big part of my mind and conquered it. She’s invaded my dreams, too. Dreams of sun, shining on my face and some birds whistling; of the 1920’s and flappers, the days Fitzgerald wrote so vividly of; days filled with adventures, and nights by fireplaces with cups of coffee, speaking of Literature and art and whatever the fuck else pertains to culture. These are the broken dreams I mentioned.
My eyes no longer burn, for I slept the fire away, but now my hands are cold, and the pollen outside makes me sneeze and I hate sneezing. My feet are also cold. I can’t understand myself. The things I want don’t reflect the things society projects against my face, the things they want me, like they want all of us, to want. I don’t want to grow old and die, grow old and get a job, grow old and be so despairingly bored that I mow the lawn for something to do. I want to stay young, I want to be a writer, I want to remain doing things that make me happy. My happiness is important to me, since it is so faint and unnoticed amongst my own mind. But it is an un, so I feel it should be mine always. But it’s rare.
My foot currently reflects my emotional state: numb. I don’t feel anything significant lately, just this sort of emptiness that eats away at one’s very being. This void is unable to be filled, it just persists, sucking in parts of my greater whole and vanquishing anything that interferes with it. I want to sleep. I want to stay asleep for a long time, where I can exist in my dreams, and know I exist there, because if I didn’t, then there’d be no reason to sleep. Exhaustion builds character, I hear. But I sleep to dream, to experience things I’m deprived of in the real world. Things that don’t really exist, except for inside the mind of a foolish boy, naive and far too wishful for his own good.
Things I feel, no one else can feel, because if I exist, I exist in my own state of being, not human, not in nature, but inside of everyone’s mind. I’m a mural, painted by the hands of everyone I’ve ever met, ever spoke with, or shared an idea with. My image is entirely up to the people who have had an affect on me or likewise, I’ve affected them. I wish that were true, too. I want to be able to be invisible one day, so that maybe I could be missed by those who know me. That’s been bothering me a lot, lately. I’m not missed. People say they miss me, but that term is so generic, so overused. Am I missed of just forgotten until I reappear again? I just need some sort of reassurance that I am worth missing, that my existence is valid and when it’s gone I’ll be thought of as someone who mattered. Many people won’t ever read this, or glimpse at it, or if they do, much less understand it. That girl mentioned earlier may go unnamed for all of time, an un that only I know. That’s how it will be with my entire mind though. I never say enough, or rather, enough of what matters. So once I’m gone, so will a mind full of things that deserve their place on paper or in the ocean that is sound; waves that may strike up a storm or bring that ocean to a calm. Words that will travel with a breath warm like that fireplace.
The morning moves on, and I feel tired now, but that still isn’t enough to bring me to bed. I need to dream. And I know I will. I always know that I will, because my mind, much like a book or a movie, is there, it exists, it projects its wants and needs against a screen and I watch it in my sleep; and it’s beautiful, truly incredible, and if I could really describe it to you, you would agree. But I can never find the words, or my tongue ties itself in a knot, or my mind makes me think so. One day I’ll get better. All these un’s will be put to rest.
