eat me henger

i'm afraid. i'm afraid of hurting those who decide to love me. i want to be loved though. i really do. i just carry with me decades of integrating the many times i've been the bad guy. i truly wish for a love with the cleanest slate. not the piece of shit i see when i look into the mirror. i act out the bad guy, the piece of shit that i think i am. i hurt others because i'm not being pure, not honest. i guess before i could begin to consider love, i need to first be real. because the "bad guy", the "piece of shit", they're not really me. they were me, they were others' perceptions of me for a momentary period. but the me that has the capacity for care, protection, joy, love - lives within me.

it's 1am on a workday and i can't fall asleep. i yawn. my eyes are getting blurry. but i've been laying in bed for hours and i can't be at peace. i reckon it's my irresponsible use of caffeine to blunt the medication comedown that i avoid. perhaps it could be the blunting of endogenous melatonin from repeated use of the substance to stun me into unconsciousness. i guess this is the new phase of my life. being drug dependent just to stay functionally alive. i've longed for the sweet release of death. i'm gifted other things instead. ostensibly everything that goes my way are gifts, one way or another. i'm just not getting the one i truly want. and i give up, if i have to struggle through a sleepless night every now and then, if i have to survive anxiety attacks every now and then, then fuck it, we ball. truth of the matter is, i've already gotten the sweet release of death already. just not in the form i wanted it to be. essentially, i'm already d...

it's quite telling that i've been told a couple of times already that i should let my friends be friends for me.  we're past the casual phase of friends primarily spending fun times together. with what used to be a bigger social circle, it has filtered into the handful of true friends that that match intellectual rigor or emotional depth - or both, if i'm lucky. i've always been present at their lowest, and have been fine being absent at their highest. i'm the clutch friend they needed to get through tough times. i'm well versed in navigating the dark because i deal with it every single day. once we're done, i can crack a joke, share a smile, and life normalizes. except for me. i have to return to cohabitating with my demons. serve them dinner, fold their laundry, tuck them to sleep - because somehow i'm convinced i need them to keep me sharp for the next time someone needs my services out of hell. i've given up on having people around me that un...

the permanence of people eludes me.  how we start out will never be how we finish. intense interpersonal resonance makes the present feel so strong that we believe we have power over the future. i'm saddened that my relationships failed to evolve with me. i'm partly at fault. i was too complacent. i took it for granted. the work to get it isn't the same kind of work to maintain it. i didn't evolve with my relationships. and it takes communication. clear communication. none of the obfuscations. i need to work on that. i need to work on remembering respect for the other person. consideration of their needs. my words may be my own responsibility, but having a shared stake means i have to concern myself with how my message was received. our words have power. our actions have power. communicating is both proper word choice and delivery. i need to wield it from a place of love.

the older we get, we learn to regard time differently. i used to think the shit i was into was everything to me. a decade ago, two decades ago. i was so certain that what i wanted to do will define me. and that's youth, i guess. we're a bunch of nobodies trying to fit in an already-established world made by adults for us. growing up, most of our actions were dictated by people older than us. and so it's understandable that we're so desperate for the certainty of our identity. we give it our all. we were all gas, no breaks. until we get it... and that's it? the thing about climbing a mountain, on the ascent, we're focused on the peak. but once we hit the summit, we find that we're at the top of one of many. with age, we find that there are more things we give our energies to. we more things that we're certain will define us. but with time we also find that how we define ourselves don't fit the circumstances we're in. the older we get, time feels l...

i used to think enlightenment would change my life for the better. i used to have fantasies about what it must be like to be above it all. the constant stream of social media stimulation makes it seem like there's more to life when chasing after our desires. but no, being "above it all" simply means dulling desire. what they don't tell you is that enlightenment kills excitement. the rat race we ran prior to achieving wisdom is what saturates our life with vibrant color. saving up for clothes that we think will look good on us and impress others. saving up for a vacation so we can temporarily break free from the daily mundanity. or simply splurging on an extravagant night out just so we can feel the power our purchases provide. but the reality is that these are all artificial constructs. we buy into things because they're an easy plug-and-play way to define ourselves. but truth is, it takes work to construct who we are. we're easily defined by what we're fo...