The Real, Actual, Incredible, Ultimate, Last, Final Post of the Year

I've been back home for a few days now, and I still face a tower of homework for the next two days before I return to school again. As odd and ill-fitting as it seems, I feel as if I'm doing good, hard labor, like clearing out trees or grinding concrete. It's primarily a clean feeling, because I know that doing my homework well and relatively early is a Good thing to do, much like brushing twice a day or holding the door for someone. Still, I can't say I'm exactly looking forward to the homework ahead of me that requires a lot of thinking. I am, however looking backward.

It starts, I suppose, with how swimmingly the first half of my break went. I have rarely enjoyed spending family time this much, but that probably had as much to do with family as with ample alone time with things of interest to do. The weekend at my (grown) cousin's house gave me a hint of what extended family living might be like, and it was great--to a point. I took advantage of hours of play time with the most adorable three year old I know, but living with so many people gets uncomfortable after a while, mentally. I started to get more and more irritable, so it was welcome when we packed up and headed to my brother's apartment. Of course, I failed to foresee the fact that we'd be bringing my mom's sister and her husband with us; I, the ever-irritated one, began to resent their presence a little. However, coming perhaps out of that specifically, I felt much closer to my mom and my brother, most of all my brother. This past week and a half, I have been forced to realize how much I really do miss my brother. And once I came to this realization, the train backwards didn't stop.

One of the greatest pleasures I get from music is somehow finding a song, especially from the '90s or early 2000s, that I recognize by ear but know nothing else about. This happened several times while I listened to Third Eye Blind's albums for the first time. I'm not sure what exactly it is that affects me so strongly about reminders from my adolescence and childhood. I think that it has something to do with the fact that I spent much of my sentient '90s focused on what I missed because of my relatively strict, somewhat oppressive parents. Then, as now, I yearned for some sort of freedom from their rules, most of all, as always, in relation to girls. You see, when I was younger, I constantly fell madly in love. It was somewhat of a cruel affair, especially given the aforementioned parental situation. In retrospect, however, I suppose that my powerful passions might have been in some way a result of the rules of my parents. Fearing the wrath of my parents at relationships with girls gave me a wonderful wall to hide behind. I justified my shyness with necessity and spun mental tales of love with abandon. Every time I hear a song from that era that I knew, I am transported back to the pleather seats of an obtuse yellow school bus, head against the window, feeling the pain of the metal fasteners at every bump, daydreaming--not idly, but with utmost intensity--about not necessarily a girl, but the new me that would necessarily emerge from such an open personality. I constantly rewrote plotlines of books and movies to include me. I was always the patient, thoughtful friend of the female lead, who was generally a very pretty tomboy. We were always best friends until somehow we knew we were in love. I see now that I probably didn't really understand any of this complex dynamic. I had figured that it would happen of its own, and that it didn't really matter because I couldn't participate in anything like that now. Still, years later, every single time I hear "Inside Out" by Eve 6 or "Jumper" by Third Eye Blind or especially "Kiss Me" by Sixpence None the Richer, I go back and I rewrite, I revise my childhood as I think it should have, could have been. To me, the '90s should have been lived in exactly as Third Eye Blind sounds, if that makes any sense, with a particular mix of carefree-ness and import, a sense of destiny but the time and opportunity to while away hours laughing, joking, Hanging Out with my friends, male and female.

I think the '90s and their music mean so much to me especially because I didn't really live them in the sense I'm living these years now. I surprise myself by finding so much meaning in the past, especially in such a decade. I find myself wishing that the songs that evoke nostalgia for me now actually came out around when I graduate from high school (tricky tense problems there), because I feel a much stronger attachment to them as pop music that was popular and musically good. It seems right that my most nostalgic years should be my high school ones, right? And maybe that will be so down the road, but right now, those glorious, sunny, completely self-fabricated '90s have my number.

So what am I doing reminiscing about the '90s on the eve of 2008? It all comes down to this. I needed to look backward ten years so that I could see back just one year. Disregard the stilting, contrived pabulum I wrote below. Here is the truth: I don't know exactly what being mature or what being an adult means, but I know that I moved closer to it in 2007 than in any other year. I underwent trials by fire, pushing through situations I had no business being in, somehow managing to emerge more or less okay. And yes, I am grateful that I am more mature, that I am more equipped to deal with life, that I might be a tiny bit wiser. But goddamnit, I don't know if I want to grow up. I strongly suspect that what I really want is to revisit the '90s as I am now and taste the sweet fruit of an idyllic teenage life. That's a little bit dangerous, isn't it?

Happy New Year

The Year in Review

As I type, on the 38th floor of an apartment building on the northwest corner of Millennium Park in Chicago, I glance out the window and see, to my great surprise, a strangely affecting skyline. Only at this moment do I realize, overwhelmed by unexpected beauty, that life is indeed good and that the year is approaching its end. January seems now like an incredibly artificial time for the new year to begin, hastily thrown in among the snow-burdened trees and ice-crusted grass. Perhaps this is done to encourage the new season of life to come earlier. At any rate, now is as good a time as any to digest the past year, which I hope to do over the next couple of days, while I should be working on my gigantic mass of homework. The easiest thing, however trite, to do would be to make lists of good things and bad things.

Good Things:
I fell in love with Stasia
I met Kristen at camp
I made 1st Team All-State for Scholastic Bowl as a sophomore
I aced the PSAT again
I got my license and experienced the relative freedom of driving myself
I played almost every minute of quite a few of our soccer games
I achieved my greatest ever level of endurance and fitness
I ran in my first track meet and actually beat people
I had a fantastic trip to India
I won $1500 in scholarships for winning a vocab bee and getting second place in an essay contest
I learned more about people I had technically known for a long time, but never took the opportunity to really talk to
I was forced to realize how much what I have chosen to spend my time on really means
I'm one year closer to college and, hopefully, concomitant freedom
I think I'm beginning to find a voice in writing
I had my most technically prolific year (literarily-speaking, if that is a legitimate phrase)
I finally have a class with Mr. Longhenry

Bad Things:
I helped screw things up with Stasia
Stasia moved away
Some of my best friendships are with people in three different states other than Illinois
My car got totaled
I have become relatively close, or friendly, with so many people that I cannot divide my time well enough between all of them and my other commitments
I was forced to admit that I could not fit in everything I wanted into my life's schedule
I'm one year farther from childhood
I have such little time to exercise my creative voice
I don't have a class with Mrs. Longhenry
I was terribly irritable with my parents

Driven by no raging, fireborn stallions 'cross the barren heath
Vaunted chariots mire beneath the death throes of the moon.
Beleaguered figures strain against the ponderous fog,
Forgotten wings strapped tight with vengeful chains,
Tempered strength betrayed by mental bondage,
Depraved devotion to righteous, selfless evil.
Welded to baseness by desperate fear,
Ravaged shadows scour the gelid soil
Pursued by relentless ghosts,
Tattered remains of dignity.
Condemned travesties
Surrendered souls
Fallen angels
Broken men.

I have just now finished the 7th and final Harry Potter book.

High above the mucky-muck, castle made of clouds,
There sits Wonderboy, sitting oh so proudly.
Not much to say, when you're high above the mucky muck.

Wonderboy, what is the secret of your power?
Wonderboy, won't you take me far away from the mucky-muck?
-- Tenacious D, "Wonderboy"

I can't explain it, but I am so incredibly happy right now. I completely dominated my calculus test today, finishing in half the time. Then I remembered that I had to walk home today, because my dad is out of town. I walked out of the doors of the RVC building, and the wind hit me square in the face. And then I laughed. I started laughing almost hysterically, uncontrollably, as I walked, or rather flew across the campus. It took nearly 40 minutes for me to walk home, but I enjoyed every second of it.

While I was cruising through the wide open spaces on the outside of the RVC campus, the wind was my traveling companion, shaping my hair into crazy contortions and washing over my face. At that moment, I felt that the wind was love.

Every step of mine had an extra bounce, every stride a bar of music. I could hear beauty in the silence, save for the caressing roar of the wind. I rejoiced in the incredible exquisiteness and synergy of the sun, the trees, the road, my feet, the wind...

I cannot remember the last time I laughed for the pure joy of life. I meet with much difficulty in trying to describe exactly how I felt. I was there. I existed. The world existed. And then it wasn't quite me any more. I felt simultaneously empty and filled, about to burst. When I laughed, sunlight came out. I was merely an empty doorway between the world and itself, a temporary container.

As I reached my neighborhood, my steps had almost started to turn into skips and jumps, but as soon as my feet touched the off-white sidewalk, I slowed down. And I began to whistle. I hit every high note in every song that I could never do before, and I never stopped whistling until I got home. I whistled several songs I knew and even a few that never existed before I brought them into being. Can there be a greater sense of thrill than at the moment of creation? I didn't just hear the music, I felt it. Even more: I was the music, and my body was an instrument, the most perfect musical instrument in the universe, and the trees stopped swaying to listen. The music arced above and around the houses, twirled around the mailboxes, and planted itself in the lawns.

When I got back to my house, I suddenly realized I had forgotten my key, which would have put me in a rather sticky situation. But, as if to prove to me that today is a perfect day, the patio door was open when it should not have been. I entered, and I shouted the language of delight to the ghosts of all the footsteps, tears, laughs, and stories my house holds. I walked up to the computer, and pumped up the volume on the sweet set of speakers my brother left behind for us as a gift. I put on "What's My Age Again?" and I danced. I jumped. I twirled. I pumped my fist. I felt fluid, unfettered, buoyant. And then I sat down and started writing.

Day after day it reappears
Night after night my heartbeat, shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away

Alone between the sheets
Only brings exasperation
It's time to walk the streets
Smell the desperation
-- Men at Work, "Overkill"

I cried tonight. I can hardly believe how overdone and cliché this sounds, but I left the concert building after Kelsey Wild had finished. I walked through the parking lot. I hid next to a Dumpster. I slid down the side until I was sitting in dirt oddly scattered on the gravel. I put my face in my hands. And then I cried, for lack of a better word. It was crying in everything but the tears. The tears stayed in my eyes. But everything else--the ragged gasping, the involuntary facial contortions--it all happened. In my personal case, this was a big deal.

Everything tonight reminded me that I couldn't be with her, that the obstacles were too big for her to live with, that I would throw all caution and rationality and cares about other people to the winds at just the suggestion of holding her hand but that she couldn't do it. Even the upbeat parts of the Imaginary Heroes set only helped remind me of how happy I could be if we had the relationship that I've been dreaming about lately. It all only hammered into me how much I wanted to just grab her and dance and go nuts and not care about anything but her and us and we and together and forever in an instant. I felt a blow to the gut when I saw JohnBrown and Val being mildly dorky but still cute while dancing together, knowing that I couldn't have that something so simple but joyful. It killed me so terribly that she wasn't next to me when I was all alone on that relatively crowded gym floor. It hurt when she scoffed during Kelsey Wild after I told her I was lonely sitting down while she stood up, even though she sat for the rest of the songs after that. I felt my ribs being squeezed when my leg incidentally touched her foot and she shifted her position so that we weren't touching at all anymore. I felt the dark pull of despair and depression when I saw that even the slightest, most innocent contact--the kind that would be nothing special among friends, especially good ones, but took on monumental, epic proportions with her--could not happen.

I want to finish my cry. I want to feel the hot tears stain my cheeks and feel the salty dryness of emotional pressure released. I want to feel drained and dead-tired, if for nothing else than to stop me from my own personal overkill. I keep on thinking that I wish my life were less complicated, that I could go back to only having to worry about my next homework assignment or how soon I could watch the newest episode of "Heroes" online. But then I think of her, and of the ridiculous intensity and confusing mix of emotions I feel when I'm around her most of the time, and I really can't make that trade. Even though I know I might be technically happier on average by not really caring that much about anything as compared to driving myself insane and replaying scenarios over and over again, the vaguest possibility of a near future for her and me always persists. It doesn't just survive like a cockroach, it explodes into ecstatic hope at the slightest misconstrued "hint" that she might choose me now. We get along so swimmingly during the times that I am confident that I'll eventually be able to be with her for real, probably because those are the only times that I can be around her and not be beaten in the face with the cruel knowledge of our impossibility.

She says I'm being melodramatic, that I take everything too personally. What she doesn't realize is that because she is SHE, things that would normally not matter much either way to me with other people become all-important. I can't help over-analyzing every move she makes or every time she speaks, because I am always desperately searching for clues that my dream is coming true. It's scary how much of my emotional happiness she carries in her soft hands, but for some reason, that's not anything close to enough to get me to jump out.

Somehow, those blissful hours and days of playful pure comfort have been enough to keep me going this long, but tonight...tonight I felt broken. I felt abandoned, discarded, unworthy. See, no matter how much the rest of me realizes the situation is anything but black and white, there's this little part of that keeps saying, "If she really cared about you, she would put you and your happiness above the other girl and everybody else." Of course, the rest of me couldn't stand to force her to be my girlfriend using a guilt tactic like that, and I don't even think that what the little part of me says all the time is really true.

Is this my punishment for ambition and hope? Am I doomed to live a life right now of unfulfilled, impossible promise? I can't even think straight anymore. Maybe it'll be clearer in the morning, but I somehow doubt it. I'm trapped.

This may never start
We could fall apart
And I'd be your memory
Lost your sense of fear
Feelings insincere
Can I be your memory?

So get back, back, back to where we lasted
Just like I imagine
I could never feel this way
So get back, back, back to the disaster
My heart's beating faster
Holding on to feel the same.
-- Sugarcult, "Memory"

I feel like I'm too good at forgetting now. Every time I go to sleep and wake up, I feel like I'm a part of washing machine cycle. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Things I'm thinking about the night before suddenly don't really trouble me much in the morning, with a few exceptions. I can never remember what I'm supposed to do or when to do it. I seem fine at remembering information from my classes, even though I sometimes don't remember the homework assignments. Sometimes, the more I try to recapture a thought, a feeling, an idea, the more I feel it slip and fade away until it seems like it never happened. How can I ever truly know that something happened if I can't reexperience it through memory? Am I doing something essentially unhealthy every time my mind unconsciously lets something painful or difficult slide away? There is so much uncertainty in my life right now, so many decisions to make, so many options to weigh. And my best source of solace is also yet another source of uncertainty. I think that my odd memory problems are probably an effect of my slow coast through this part of my life, my expectancy of a more important future, and an unwillingness to make decisions. I'm floating in a stream down a mountain, and problems slough off of me like dissolving dirt, but they're never really going to be gone. I'm slowly heading for the waterfall, and I have to be awake for it. I only hope I can snap out of it in time.

The only times I feel totally comfortable or "right" now seem to be when I'm doing academic things, be it tedious analytic geometry or having too much fun playing a Jeopardy! review game in U.S. History. In the past several weeks, I've stepped so much out of my comfort zone that I think I'm starting to crave simplicity and constancy. As much as I care most of the time that people see me as more than a walking brain, I can't deny that I still take comfort in those things that are stereotypically "me." At times like these, when I feel pulled in so many different directions at once, even in past, present, and future, it feels good to take refuge in the first part of my personality, probably one of the first things people know about me. I have been discovering so many new parts of me, both good and bad, that I feel like a deck of cards that badly needs shuffling, some evening out, some integration. How can I even begin investigating the broader reaches of the all-important question "Who am I?" if I can't even figure out which fragment of me is going to show up in any given situation? Maybe that's it. I'm so busy juggling all the fragile shards of myself that I almost can't be bothered by any external problems.

But on top of all that, there have been times recently that I've felt happier than I can remember in years. It seems that the cycle of hope and letdown is the one immutable law of teenage life. I need some sleep.

Never in my life can I remember feeling so trapped, so helpless. A baby may cry, but his loving mother will eventually return, to send back all fear and pain into oblivion. If I cry, I will only push her away even farther.

I don't know how public or private I can or should go here. I'm lost in an ocean of uncertain quicksand. I don't know where I can step, which way will lead me out, but I feel myself sinking all the time.

I can feel anger rising up inside of me now, but I don't even know exactly what I am angry about. I've never been the kind of person who can't stand not having absolute control over any situation, but now the words "nothing I can do" haunt me day and night, beating against my skull. I dream that one day, those words will finally escape the cage of my mind. But when they finally crash through the wall into the world, I fear they will leave their silhouettes in the wall behind like Looney Tunes characters fleeing in frenzied panic as a reminder of their horrible power.

I rarely cry now. It's been that way for several years, but before that, I cried much more than most other boys my age. I would cry when I got in trouble at school and felt that leaden weight in my stomach, the disappointment and anger I might face pulling down on my throat, my Adam's apple, bringing the tears out through sheer weight and gravity. I cried sometimes when I experienced physical pain, but those times were never as bad; the pain was nothing compared to the hot mix of shame, self-loathing, and anger that plagued me. I don't know whether this happened by conscious effort or the natural effects of aging, but I find myself physically unable to cry in most situations. I remember when Rory died in eighth grade, I wanted to cry so badly, partially for reasons that I am not proud of today. Part of me wanted that sympathy, that sense of belonging that comes with grieving as a part of a group. I think (and I hope) that the major reason I wanted to cry was to prove to myself that I was indeed human, not stone indifference. But taking another critical look at myself, I see that I thought that situation was the first test: death, if nothing else, would separate those who were sensitive and caring from those who were merely loud and abrasive (as I often was) without anything underneath. I was supposed to cry; why couldn't I? As much as I hate to admit, as I sat aimlessly in school that day, the day we found out (February 22nd), I am not sure whether I grieved more for Rory or for myself. Then there was a memorial a few weeks later, in a big auditorium of a church/school combo. I sat through much of it feeling like a passive observer. I mainly learned how little I knew about him, but also how utterly worthy of knowing he was. I witnessed the photographic version of his life, speeding up as he grew older. (It's odd: as a society, we seem to value innocence and purity so much that we capture these moments in children's lives almost to exclusion, but most of our behavior as a whole totally contradicts that sentiment.)

The memorial finally reached the point where audience members were invited to come up and share their memories and messages about and to Rory. I still felt like I was an outsider in Rory's life, so I was planning to sit it out. After some of Rory's family got up and spoke, Derek Dwyer came up and talked about how Rory sat with him and his friends at lunch. At first, I was compelled to think of this with some small amount of scorn: how could merely eating lunch mean anything when compared to the people that had literally stood by Rory's side throughout the entire ordeal? But then I realized that Derek was making tribute in his own way, celebrating Rory, and life, in its simplicity, its everyday-ness. After Derek sat down, my mom (who sometimes acts like she's my personal promoter) continued to tell me to go up and speak. I think she told me I might regret not doing so later, but even if she didn't, I thank her. I went up to the microphone, and every bit of eloquence left me. I said something about how intimidating Rory's outlandish haircuts were to opposing Scholastic Bowl teams. All I remember about my speech after that was some stammering and finishing with "Rory, we love you." By the time I got half-way back to my seat, I had broken down crying. I wept then as I had not in years. I made up for every time that I had felt invisible law telling me this is when you should cry; every heart-rending movie, every book that settled its fog of abject depression over me for a day, or a week, without sudden release. I wept then for Rory. I wept for his nobility, his ambition, his brilliance. I wept for the time he proclaimed to his dad after reading about Gandhi: "One day, I will change the world." I wept for how he reminded me of myself, or how I would like to think of myself. I wept for how when you unraveled all the little pretensions and fabricated dramas of middle school, Rory was a tender, fragile little boy who died in his father's arms, who dreamt big and touched more lives that he could possibly imagine.

After the program inside the auditorium, we approached his dad. As I put forth my hand to shake his, he wrapped his arms around me and told me, "Rory wanted to be you. He so admired what you do, what you achieved. You were his role model, Siva." I don't think anything could have prepared me for that. I don't remember the exact words, but somehow I don't think they mattered. For the first (and about the last) time, I felt like a member of that inner circle of Rory's truly loved ones. When I got home, I cried two more times in the shower. I felt inspired to live up to Rory's image of me, and I imagined myself receiving an award for curing cancer and dedicating it to Rory. That feeling ended up not lasting forever, but I am not too sad about it. I do not feel horribly guilty that February 22nd passed by this year with little to none recognition, including from me. Rory's legacy is not of guilt and sorrow. Rory will always remind me to fight for love, for happiness, for life itself. Rory will prevent me from living as in a padded hallway, protecting myself against pain at the cost of living a hazy travesty of real life. Rory tells me to leap, to understand and accept pain and consequences, to never stop straining and reaching for what is important to me, to be proud of my hope and not dismiss it as naïveté. Every now and then, I will hear Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's achingly beautiful medley of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "What A Wonderful World," and I will go back to that darkened auditorium where I confronted despair and found Rory instead.

Sacrifice

Half-strutting
Cautiously sauntering
Secretly proud of the overlarge hands tucked by the thumbs in his pockets
Trapped between reckless abandon and paralyzing fear
Pushed forward by default
Bearing the fire with dark joy
Patent leather boots
Tapping out the rhythms of his soul’s lament.

Suspended above the morbid pavement
Knocking toe to ground for the sake of appearance
Molten gold flickering through rich chocolate hair
Amazon bronze skin
Concealing the crippling lacerations of her anguished heart

She knows the slow, sure poison in her moist lips, the sweet curve of her cheek
She pleads with her captivating eyes
He is too entranced to see her plaintive warning,
The fear swelling within her battle-wearied mind

Desperate, she strikes blindly
Impaling him upon the cross of love
For a moment, he is engulfed by the
Writhing, rending, tearing, obliterating
But each splintered spike submits to the heat of his passion
Melted down and absorbed

He pushes forth, girding himself against the pain, making it a part of him
His left hand meets hers, drinking from the cool mountain well
As his right ascends, braving the lightning crackling in her hair
And he leans forward
His trembling lips crossing the distance in eternity
More helpless than Zeno’s runner

They touch.
And now, quickly, she is fading, fleeing
Sublimating into the anguish of the betrayed child
Violet ribbons slither from her imploding heart, suffocating her
A present for the gaping darkness

She is swallowed
And he jumps in after her
He leaps for love, beauty, innocence, idealism, hope into the ravenous maw of sorrow
He is swallowed

And he smiles.

When I was young, the smallest trickle of light
Could catch my eye
Then life was new and every new day
I thought that I could fly.

I believed in what I hoped for,
And I hoped in things unseen
I had wings and dreams could soar,
I just don't feel like flying anymore.
-- Five Iron Frenzy, "Every New Day"

Once again, it has been a while since I fired up the writing cogs. Five Iron Frenzy is indeed a Christian ska band, but that doesn't really bother me. I respect their message. They're not trying to convert anybody. And they play good music. I'm not sure if what I'm going to write will have much to do with that song, but maybe I'll end up there anyway.

There is now a girl. I can honestly say that I have never met another person quite like her. She essentially defies boundaries and labels, but I will not make the same mistake I have made before. She is not perfect. She is not a shining, infallible angel. The strangest thing is that the part of her I think draws me to her the most is also the same part that confuses me beyond reason. She almost always speaks her mind. In fact, she can be quite brutal. She dissected me in about five minutes flat. I'm not saying that she got it all right, but she's fearless. I try not to emphasize this, especially because she thinks I'm horribly shallow (but appreciates that I acknowledge looks do matter at least a little bit for me), but she has all the fierce, painful beauty of, well, a tigress. My urge to hold her in my arms is often so strong that it scares me. I can feel the places on my arms and torso where she fits in; interlocked, we will make a brilliant mosaic of pain, and redemption, and intellect, and humanity.

She is loyal to her friends. And sometimes, despite myself, I hate her for it. Because that loyalty rips her inside. It savagely shreds her into pieces that I cannot, I am not allowed to put back together. Her own sense of betrayal tortures her so much that she cannot let herself get too close to me, or at least that is what she tells herself. And despite that, we both can feel where we are headed, and that knowledge destroys her all the more. I feel there is so little I can do, and it pains me.

But that's not really true. There is something I can do, but I honestly can't pinpoint the reason that I don't want to do it. I simultaneously disgust myself with my insensitivity and wonder curiously just how bad I could get. I guess it's sort of a Jekyll and Hyde situation. I always viewed myself as Jekyll, and I strove to be Jekyll, but now I'm expressing some of my Hyde-ness. And I'm almost willing to see how far it can go. How much of a bastard can I be? But at the same time, a tiny voice inside me is screaming, "Don't let that person be the one you are. Don't let him be the one that she knows you as, when you know that he doesn't have to be you. Don't fuck it up."

When I was younger, I used to think about how incredible I would be as a boyfriend and eventually a husband. I was not like those guys on TV and in the movies that did boneheaded shit and broke girls' hearts. I would never even dream of hurting my girlfriend in any way. If only all those girls knew who I would be for them, they would be lining up. I had the right mix of sensitivity and intelligence to always be a girl's perfect man.

But now, I know that I really am human. And being human means that I have the capacity to hurt those I love and those I care about. But being human also means that I can change. I don't have to let Hyde take over, even though it's so tempting and so much easier. I don't have to let the tide take me away into the stormy seas. I can stay right here on the shimmering beach. It may not be perfect, but at least she's here with me.

"Scar tissue that I wish you saw
Sarcastic mister know-it-all
Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you ’cause
With the birds I’ll share
With the birds I’ll share
This lonely view
With the birds I’ll share
This lonely view..."
-- The Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Scar Tissue"

I want to vent. Baddddd. But I really don't feel like venting to anybody that I know. In fact, I feel like talking to most people has become an unnecessary chore. Pretty much everything right now has become a chore. What happened? Why am I living only just to get through the week, so I can plan on catching up on sleep and manage to leave the weekend more exhausted (from doing nothing) than I was before? Most importantly, how come I have this savage desire to be a total jerk? And why am I giving in to that desire? Why has apathy replaced idealism? Why is this happening now? Why am I freaking out over nothing? Why aren't I freaking out more? Why do I just not fucking care?

I'm so tired of overanalyzing my life. So tired of trying to figure out other people. I'm tired of trying to sit back and relax. Hell, I'm tired of trying.

I crave attention. But now, I find myself systematically burning bridges with people who try to reach out. And by golly, I'm not even sorry.

I so much want for a fresh start. Just to go anywhere, not to know anybody, and start over. Be whoever I want to be. I want to be the mystery. I want to meet somebody like me. No, I want to meet me. Who am I from the outside? I'm finding the internal me to be increasingly unpleasant, like an unwanted roommate who leaves his crumpled-up failures all over my side of the apartment.

And even now, in my fuck-the-world haze, my attention-craving, wannabe-entertainer personal roommate is thinking about what words and what metaphors would most impress.

I want to be a tiger. A tiger does not try. A tiger does. A tiger is sinewy, deadly grace; unadulterated, uncompromising fangs. A tiger has no debts. A tiger does not cultivate relationships like carefully grown bacteria in petri dishes or fragile foreign flowers in a greenhouse. A tiger knows no gnawing fear, no pressures of responsibility, no pathetic self-deconstruction. A tiger relies not on what he knows but on the truth. A tiger is truth.