2 Minutes. Go!

I wasn't forged in a crucible. I'm not made of iron, and I wasn't wrought from some kind of heroic mold. I am self-guided and maybe even autonomous. I am irrelevant. Tiny. Just like you. And it is so beautiful. It is wonderful to be so small that you can hide in secret places. You can almost disappear. It is almost like being magical. Almost. 

I'm a momentary collection of some kind of existence expressing itself through puppetry...I am a bag of blood and bones and veins and shit. I wasn't called upon to take on any kind of heroic quest. There was no call to arms. The world is fine with letting me quietly sit in the back. 

I'm not an optimist. I'm not one of those people who makes other people happy with their existence. I think I try to be a realist, but I'm not always reasonable, and, really, I don't like labels. I'm not sitting on the shelf of some grocery store for you to gawk at. 

I am engaged with being engaged. I like shiny things. I like to hear birds sing.

I was not sculpted in marble. I am not an archetype. I am not a salesman, and I have no savvy hype. I am so small, I am disappearing as you read this. One more stiff breeze, and I'll be gone. 

I am not some kind of art installation for you to stare at. I am not a performance. I am guiding my flesh suit as best I can. I can almost pretend that I'm like you. I'm usually so good at pretending. 

I am a beautiful nothing. That's all. 

A speck.

       .

2 Minutes. Go!

There are places you can find where their is no noise. No light. These dark spaces allow you to catch your breath. Imagine the sensory stimulus you are constantly bombarded with...it's a miracle that any of our brains work at all. Mine works hard, so sometimes I have to find that dark, quiet place. 

Sometimes I can find the place fishing. It was easy to find it at the bottom of a bottle. Fishing doesn't make you wake up sad and paranoid and anxious. So, I stick to fishing, but it doesn't work as well as whiskey. 

Fishing doesn't have the same power, but it doesn't leave me broken.

It sometimes seems like life is a test. Are you able to find the dark places you need? If not, you will be a failure. And no one likes a failure. 

Sleep is nice if you can't remember your dreams. Sometimes, I get that break. Sometimes, I don't. 

At the end of the day, we are only the safety we feel. We are the subconscious cocoon we create for ourselves. If you don't have one, make one. Try to avoid whiskey. It pays dividends you don't want. 

Trust me.

2 Minutes. Go!

The sounds from the wall are becoming more frequent. More intense. It is a scraping sound. A desperate sound. You thought it was the drugs, but now the drugs are gone, and the noise is not. This is unsettling. This is awful. This is par for the course.

Maybe it's animals. That's what you tell yourself, but you know that you deserve something more than animals in the walls. You deserve to be haunted, tortured; you are begging for it. 

You turn the lights on. Turn them off. Hope that it will make the noise stop, but, if anything, it just gets louder. More insistent. You start attributing emotions to the sound. The sound is getting angry. 

The police will find a scene they can't begin to explain. The cops will call the station and say, "no, not just dead....torn apart! The whole place is covered in blood." The younger cops feel frightened. They shake and it rattles the guns and batons and tasers they wear. There is nothing worse than a cowardly cop.

They will eventually give up. The house will be torn down. 

There are walls everywhere, though. This is just a temporary lull. 

Can you hear it?

2 Minutes. Go!

You can smile through the pain, but the smile is only on the outside. Inside, you are anything but smiling. You are scared. They were right. You are living your life of quiet desperation. It's not something to be ashamed of. It is all too common. 

When you're small, they shame you for crying. They shame you for showing too much emotion. Too happy is almost as bad as too sad. They set these expectations and give you fucked up ways to look at yourself. 

As you age, they talk about authenticity, but they don't mean it. They don't want to know your sorrows...they just want to see that smile. How are you? Me? I'm fine. Short and sweet. No one has to think too much about it. No empathy required.

The thing they don't tell you is that you are giving up a lot in living for other people. You are taking shots you shouldn't take. You're the one that feels bad. That makes you right. 

I don't know, honestly. I'm just a bag of bones and shit like you. Sometimes, I feel superior, but most of the time I try not to feel at all.