Better

Let me tell you, it feels really good to feel like me again.

Maybe it’s just a high after a low, but I feel really good. I really do. This life of mine that felt like a wreck a few weeks ago has slowly been coming back together. And yeah, I’m still on the fritz a little with some people, but for the most part, I feel pretty good. There’s one part that I’m a little…uneasy…about. I’m not all that surprised though. I never really fit with that one group anyway.

But some friends and I talked, and it helped. Maybe I just think that they understood what I said but the fact remains that I said it and that alone makes me feel better. I just gotta be me. That’s all. And I don’t have to “try” to do that. I just got to “be” it.

So here’s to a new beginning. Let’s hope it sticks.

*Sigh*

Yeah, you probably don't even want to read this. It's pretty darn depressing.

How did I get here? I feel like my life is a wreck.

I totally screwed up. How can I go back and change it? I’ve burned so many bridges that I’m stuck on an island with no way off. I lost friends. I lost people. People. I cared about these people and now they disappear. I used to think they were my best friends, and they’re gone. I don’t know why. I don’t know how. I hate it. I can’t talk to them without feeling like the kid who screwed up his life. I used to have it together! I used to be the one who could say, “Now, look, if you do it like this, it would have been okay.” But I can’t say that anymore. I thought I was genuine, the real deal, you know? That I was me, and just me, not anyone else. I thought everyone else wasn’t really who they thought they were.

The kicker is this: I’m the phony. Man, am I a phony. I can’t say whether someone else is right or wrong. How can I? I’m so stupid. I can’t believe how dumb I was. How dumb I am. I’m such a self-righteous jerk. I don’t know why anyone puts up with me. I wouldn’t put up with me. All my stupid jokes and stupid attempts to act like I’m somebody. They don’t matter anymore really.

Darn it what did I do that made me like this? The thing that makes me happy is all wrong. It shouldn’t be. And when I do start to get happy, to think about it, to remember it and smile, I can’t enjoy it. Because, you see, I know that it’s just not possible for me to stay feeling like that. When something starts getting really good, I know that I’ll feel terrible soon. Why? Why can’t I let go of things? You think by now, after ticking so many people off and being such and idiot I would have just said, “Forget it all.” I can’t.

Sad thing is, I can’t even remember the past and be happy about it. Because I don’t know if any of it was real. Maybe everyone was just a big phony. Maybe no one really cared anyway. Maybe I’m just a big pain of a loser that gets in people’s way and they’re too sorry for me to tell me to go away. I always feel like that. Like I’m a bother to people. I think they talk about me when I’m not around. I think people say how much of a phony I am when I’m gone or how annoying I am. It’s no accident that I’m always stuck at home while everyone else is out and about with their friends. No one wants to hang out with a phony, you know? I can’t blame them really. I wouldn’t want me around either.

But the one person that I know doesn’t think any of those things about me, I can’t hang around that person. Life sucks. It just does. And it’s made worse because I am convinced that I just annoy people. I just can’t believe anyone would really want to be around me. Believe it or not, I was an optimist. Then I ruined things. It all started one day with one bus ride and one person. I could point to a time in history and show you that’s where my life completely changed course. For the better in one way, and for the worse in some other ways.

Maybe it’s all just because I feel so alone a lot of the time. Like I’m reaching out for something to keep me afloat and it’s not there. I can’t find the support from the things, from the people around me. I’m just lost in the middle of an ocean, and it’s dark now and I don’t know which way land is.

Or maybe not. Maybe I’m just a phony.

Oh it can't hurt to be a little dark...

So I actually had a lot of fun writing that last poem, even if it was a little dark and a little depressing. At least it had emotion, you know? And I spent probably a good half-hour writing it. And, to top it all off, my friend loved it. So I decided to write another one and spent just as much time if not more writing it. I thought it turned out pretty well. I tried a different rhyming scheme, and, surprisingly, it worked. Enjoy this...I decided to to title it "No End to Time"
____________________________________

So I was happy for a time,
Before the pain and warning signs.
Every day trying to find,
a way to travel back in time.

I need a way to stop the clock,
Reverse a tick, take back a tock.
I need some way to pick the lock,
Open the past so we can talk.

And all the times I keep trying,
To go back and stop your crying,
I keep losing, I keep sighing,
Every time I keep on dying.

I lost myself so long ago,
So long ago I just don’t know,
If I can stop the raging flow,
Stop the river before you go.

Mend this bleeding heart that’s broken,
Please take my thanks as your token,
Don’t forget the words we’ve spoken.
Either way, I’m left heartbroken.

I can’t go back and make it fit.
Stuck behind these walls, I sit,
Now I finally realize it,
There’s no end to this dark pit.
______________________________________

Well...what'd you think? C'mon...good or bad, let me know!

If you're looking for a happy post...

...This isn't the place to find it. I've got a million and one thoughts on a million and one things...minus the million part. Anyway, while I'm in the mood, I figured to make good on a promise to someone to write a dark poem SERIOUSLY. Enjoy it, but maybe bring a flashlight.

"Left Alone in the Dark"

See a light,
it burns red with a glow.
It reflects in your eyes,
and you already know,
when the past is forgotten
it continues to grow
into something much darker,
even light cannot show.

I know of a song, it kills as it’s sung.
It tells you, “Remember, remember some more
whatever you loved,
what you once knew for sure.”
But you’ve forgotten, it’s over,
and you hate it for days.
The song doesn’t care,
It laughs while it plays.

The eyes that watch you,
they all shine green,
burning with envy,
poisoned with greed.
They take what they want,
they leave nothing for you.
And you cry out and scream,
but what good will it do?

Alone in the dark,
the last light burned out,
you’re left by yourself,
and now you find out,
you should have seen it,
there was never a doubt,
that’s what it’s always about.

That’s what it’s always about.

As Time Goes By

Let me tell you about the worst weekend of my life.

It started a week ago, really. When I realized I had a week to do a job that would normally take three times that long. I’ve been stressed out by it all week. It’s all I’ve done in my free time. And yet here I am, a little past 11:30 PM, with still an hour’s worth of work ahead of me if I’m going to get this done by tomorrow, which is the deadline. I’ve worked since this morning at it nonstop. I didn’t stop for lunch, didn’t stop for supper, and now, even after a hamburger, my stomach hurts extremely badly. Maybe I’m still hungry, maybe it’s just because I’m stressed. I don’t know.

It’s 11:35 PM. I’m so tired I won’t remember writing this tomorrow morning. But I have to do something to stay awake while I wait for the final few DVDs to burn. 11:36 PM.

One of my best friends, if not my best friend, instant messaged me today. She decided we aren’t going to talk on AIM anymore because of a thing with her boyfriend. I’m not mad at her. It’s not her fault. I understand why she’s doing it. But I was sad about it, still am sad about it, and probably won’t be really sad until tomorrow morning when I realize just how much I’m going to miss that. I was too tired to really comprehend what was going on. But, heh, I guess I do realize what’s going on since I have to brush away a tear that wants to form in my eye.

I don’t know why it’s there. It’s not like we won’t talk again. I see her at school, we talk at school. But what about after that? That’s what really makes me sad. She said it was inevitable that we’d stop talking one day, and this is one step closer. School ends in a couple of months. So I’ll ask again, what then?

I think you’ve been to graduation. You know what I’m talking about when I say “the line.” The line that you go through to say your good-lucks and good-byes to the graduates. That one. Where you get to say how much you’re going to miss them, how much they meant to you, how much you value their friendship.

I don’t get to do that. Oh, sure, I get to go through the line, but I have to act like I don’t really know her, like we don’t talk, like we haven’t talked for months. It’s a lie, yeah, but it’s a lie that she lets her boyfriend believe. Is it right? I don’t know. I just want to say goodbye in a way that shows we were more than casual acquaintances…that we knew each other, that we talked, that we listened, that we learned…and that I found a friend that made me feel like I was worth more than just being a thing to vent at or yell at or go to for a quick answer to homework problem.

It’s 11:45 PM. Sometimes I feel so stupid for talking like that and I don’t know why. I don’t want to dwell on the past or get lost in the future. I can’t change what’s already happened, but I don’t have to get in bed with it either, if you know what I mean. The past doesn’t control me. So when it comes down to it, for me, it’s never about what “should have been” or “was supposed to be” because if it didn’t happen, it obviously wasn’t “supposed to be” anyway. I just want a chance for the present to be right.

11:49 PM. My stomach feels like someone shot me in the gut with bullets that know how to swim around inside you. I’m so tired that I don’t even care.

When I wake up tomorrow, it has to be early. I have to get ready for church. No time to rest. When I get home, I have to work on the school work I’ve neglected for the past week so I could get this project done. There’s ninety chapters in the Bible I should read, but won’t. There’s four passages I should memorize, but will commit only partially to memory. Enough to pass, and for now that’s enough in itself.

I’m not asking for much here, at 11:55 PM. I just want a world where I can sleep for now, and maybe not have to act like I don’t know my friend. My stomach is still on fire and I’m starting to wonder if something is wrong with me. I just want to fall asleep and live in a dream for a while, maybe buy a house there, live there for a few years, make a decent living doing nothing.

See, in a dream, it all works how you want it to. I heard a song once. It said “I’ve been sleeping in for days/’Cause when I am awake/I will have to face my life.” That’s true.

It’s 12:00 AM. Happy Sunday, everyone.

I don’t really like being stuck in this perpetual haze caused by stress and exhaustion. I have to look for the right thing to say to my friend as she tells me we’re not talking outside of school anymore. I have to have patience and control not to snap at another friend with seemingly endless problems of her own. I don’t think she really wants a solution to them anyway. Just somewhere to vent about them, get a response from me, and then use it to say how much worse the problem is than I realize and that I nothing I suggest could be of any use anyway.

12:06 AM. I have three more DVDs to burn. I can’t believe I can still put sentences together. So tired, but probably won’t be able to fall asleep if my stomach still feels like this. Working, writing keeps my mind off of it. Everyone else is asleep. I sit here typing and waiting for another disc to be done.

The clock says 12:17 AM in the corner of my computer screen. The last disc is minutes away from being done. If I’m lucky, I’ll be asleep by one o’clock. Then again, this hasn’t been a very lucky day for me.

I might wake up tomorrow and wonder why I wrote while I waited, and maybe I’ll understand then. At least I’ll know that hands and fingers can type words even when you consciously tell yourself to open your eyes after each blink.

It’s 12:20 AM and the last disc is finally done. Good morning, everyone. Make it a better one than I do.

Eyes

Have you ever been haunted by a song? Or changed? Or anything? No, of course you haven’t. You’re not weird like me. But if you were, maybe you could relate. I guess I’ll have to explain it to you.

I never realized how many people there are around me. I mean, I have, but I never really “got” it. Think about your life for a second. You think it’s complicated, right? I think mine is. Sometimes, it’s too complicated. Okay, good, now that you’re thinking about that, think about this: How much of that “web of life” is made of other people? Quite a bit, I’m guessing. Everything you do in your life, it’s linked by people. Everyone you know is, obviously, a person. You have strong relationships, weak ones, good ones, bad ones, new ones, old ones, cherished ones, hated ones, hopeful ones, ones that will never be, ones you wish could be, ones that you’re just learning about, ones just being created…the list goes on. That’s your web. Like I said, it’s complicated, right?

Consider this: every one of those people has a web just as complicated as yours. And they know people who know people. There are circumstances in their life that you are a part of, and there are ones you are not, just as they aren’t a part of every aspect of your life. There’re things you keep hidden from them, things they keep hidden from you, things others keep hidden from both of you, and things left unspoken. Those complicated webs just got ten times more complex.

I’d been thinking about this for weeks. There are all these problems that people have that you’ll never know about. There’re a thousand reasons why a person is who he or she is. There’s no way you’ll ever know them all. Every action you make, every action they make, it’s made for a reason. Some people think that the future is predestined and set in stone. I disagree. The future is the choices we make every single moment, every second, every fraction of a second. There is nothing that we do that doesn’t affect our future. I’m not the kind of person who believes God has been limited by one future. If God is as powerful as we claim, should he not see all possible outcomes of all possible choices at all possible times? Just because the choices we make determine the future does not mean that God is blind to the future. If all outcomes are known to Him, he is never caught off guard.

But that’s getting away from my point, although it relates. My point is that there are all these people around us going a thousand different directions every day, including us. We don’t share a reality…instead, each one of our realities is intertwined without us even realizing it. We may never know what is really going on in a person’s life. All we see is what they do, what they say, what we think they are. Most of the time, we don’t even care about all the things that drive them to be who they are. Everyone has a weight slung around their neck. Sometimes we see it, sometimes we don’t. We’re blinded by ourselves and our narrow realities.

So, as I said, I had been thinking about this for a while, wondering what is behind every glance, every smile, every frown, every laugh, every expression that you can’t tell if it’s real or not. And then I heard this song that was exactly what I’d been thinking and it perfectly captured all those thoughts. It’s called “Give Me Your Eyes” by Brandon Heath. The first verse goes like this:

Looked down from a broken sky
Traced out by the city lights
My world from a mile high
Best seat in the house tonight
Touched down on the cold black top
Hold on for the sudden stop
Breathe in the familiar shock
Of confusion and chaos
All those people going somewhere,
Why have I never cared?

Exactly. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. It’s like someone hit a pause button and suddenly I’m aware of all the layers to everything happening around me. Why haven’t I ever cared about all these things around me?

Then I heard the next lines of the song:

Give me your eyes for just one second
Give me your eyes so I can see
Everything that I’ve been missing
Give me your love for humanity.

Can you imagine what it would be like to see through other people? Not like (ew) X-Ray vision, but to see all their struggles and problems and insecurities and needs. It would be too much to take in. It’d be like squeezing a lifetime’s worth of a friendship into a fraction of a second. It would overload you. You couldn’t take it all in. It’d be like standing in front of a dam just as it burst and a wall of water washed you away. I don’t know why, but I find that incredibly humbling. I finally realize, no matter how well you really know a person, you don’t know them.

I was talking to a friend. I’m not even sure what I was doing. I know what—at some level—I should do, but I don’t want to and can’t. I was seeing it from my view, not hers. Although, I think, in all honesty, she knows what I should do. But apparently she doesn’t want to either. I was afraid of messing up a relationship, of my web getting tangled in someone else’s. I was prepared to…sacrifice a friendship to keep from ruining a relationship.

But my friend told me something that gave me “eyes” for a second. After I told her I would give up a friendship for her relationship she told me, “Well, if one were ruined, I’d prefer it if you left me the other.” Wow. That was all I could say. That made so much sense. And, yeah, I don’t completely get it. No one does or ever will.

But I think, maybe, just maybe, we see shadows of what God sees through his eyes. I have a new…genuine caring for, well, everyone. Every moment I think I know who they are and what they are, I’m reminded that I really don’t. That’s a very humbling thought. There’s real hurt out there, and most of that hurt will go unrecognized by everyone but the person it’s happening to...and to God’s eyes.

If you want to hear the song, go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTsYAZvHsEQ

Things on the Mind

I’ve had a lot on my mind lately. And it’s given me a lot of things to say with no one to say them to, and a sense of not being sure how to say them anyway. A long time ago (I think two years still counts as a long time ago), a friend told me they liked me a certain way…you know, more than a friend. But see, here’s the thing: I didn’t really know them all that well at the time. We’d just started to hang out, just started to get to know each other. I’d been down that road a thousand times and 999 of those times, the person is friendly for a few weeks, maybe months, in some exceptional cases, even longer, but eventually, they just sort of disappear out of my life. And honestly, that’s how I thought this would be. Figures that this would turn out to be one out of a thousand cases that didn’t work that way.

But that’s getting a bit ahead of myself. Whoever is reading this, if anyone is reading this, I don’t know how long it will be. But I’ve needed to get it out somewhere for a while now. You can think it’s stupid; I do most of the time, but it still is there, no matter how I feel about it.

Anyway, like I said, this new friend liked me…a lot more than I thought she could, or would, or would ever want to. I was having a hard time to believe it, because see, I hadn’t done anything for her or done anything that would make me stand out from anyone else. I was just…really…myself around her, and for once, that was good enough for someone. It was a good feeling, a really good feeling. She wanted a relationship, and for a number of reasons I wasn’t sure of and am still not sure of, I said no.

I didn’t give her the explanation she deserved because, well, I didn’t even know why I said no. Maybe I was listening to people around me too much.

You know, come to think of it, that was a fun time. It really was. There was a lot less fighting between some people then. Funny. The one person who told me to go for it is now the one person who doesn’t want anything to do with my friend.

Sorry. I was saying that I was listening to people. People told me it wasn’t a good idea. And…well…yeah, how was I supposed to know? I was just starting to know the person, right? I can’t say that I really “knew” her. So, like I said already, I said no and gave a half-hearted (if that) explanation as to why I didn’t want a relationship.

Stupid. I knew why. I wasn’t good enough. That’s how I felt. I wasn’t good enough to be there for her. I wasn’t…outgoing enough to do all the things that a partner is supposed to do, or what I thought a partner was supposed to do. I couldn’t see myself as being enough for her. It wasn’t what people were saying or anything she said. It was me. It was me not doubting myself and thinking that she could do so much better than a guy like me. I just didn’t want to be boring, which is exactly what I thought I’d be. But how do you explain these things to someone? How can you say “Don’t think about me, you’ll just be disappointed” without sounding like a self-pitying jerk?

But, and this is the crazy thing, after all that, after side-stepping and not giving her a full explanation why I said no (and I wouldn’t tell her, incidentally, until two years later), after flip flopping back and forth on things—she still wanted to be friends. I really couldn’t believe it. I thought she would be mad. She should have been. But she wasn’t. And we stayed friends, and I’m so glad we did.

So we kept in touch, talked, got to know each other better, and all that wonderful stuff. The next year, she got a boyfriend. I felt good about it. It meant that she wasn’t upset about me being such a jerk toward her. She was happy and we were still friends.

Then things started to change. I guess I should mention that I was friends with her boyfriend. Or thought I was. It turns out he doesn’t like me. At all. When I’ve seen him lately, he hasn’t even responded to a “Hi there.” But let’s not get ahead of ourselves again. What was happening was, the guy, her boyfriend, he didn’t like that she was friends with me. She never really told me how much he didn’t like it until a few days ago. She should have stopped talking to me. But she didn’t. She said I meant to much as a friend to her. And, once again, I was a little amazed that anyone would want to be my friend that much.

Another year passed, and that brings us to now. Her boyfriend is graduated, they still love each other, but she still talks to me, even though she’s not supposed to. And this year…this year…she’s my best friend. I don’t know what I do without her. School would be a lot more boring and a lot lonelier, I suppose. I never really had someone who really “got” me like she does. It’s pretty awesome. Sounds great right?

Well…here we go again. Her boyfriend, the graduated one, he still thinks she isn’t talking to me at all. She knows she’s not supposed to. But she does. I just don’t get it. We tried to stop talking once…and that lasted a week. I never really got how big of a deal it was that she wasn’t supposed to talk to me until a few days ago.

It turns out, if you boyfriend did know she was talking to me, he’d break up with her. Break up with her. Can you believe that? I don’t want to put that weight on her. I told her that. But she wants to be my friend anyway. I told her not to worry about. She still wants to be my friend. It’s…just incredible.

Why would she do that for me? I don’t want to hurt her. But…it doesn’t seem to matter to her. What if someone would tell her boyfriend that we talk and hang out at school? I don’t want to think about it.

And now…now I don’t know what to do. I should tell her that I can’t keep talking to her…that I shouldn’t make her be, basically, lying to her boyfriend. That’s wrong. Extremely wrong. But could I do that? And more importantly, do I want to do that?

No. No I don’t.