For My Benz

I don't know what to tell you.

I don't know why you're upset.

But if you are, count me in.

If you are, tell me, and I will try and help.

I wish I could do more than try,

I wish I could fix these things.

And you have no idea what it's like to sit helplessly while someone else suffers.

Or maybe you do.

I wish I could stomp on the face of the person who hurt you.

I wish I could hug you and make everything better.

But I am cursed to a single form, understanding less of the world I thought I had figured out.

All I can do is rage at the rain until it stops.

Scream at the ceiling till it collapses.

And laugh at the stars until they stop shining.

If I had a wing, I would stretch it over you, shield you from the worst

If I could take your pain and make it my own, I would.

For you.

To me, no problem is too petty, which makes it even harder when it's not.

A quarter century isn't enough to comprehend what you are facing.

And if the collective consciousness of all loved, lived and dead has not figured out how to make it stop, what can I do?

But I am here.

There.

Somewhere.

And sometimes, when you're feeling low, remember that I care.

If it all becomes black and you can't find your way, you know where to find me.

I can't say I'm qualified to help, just qualified to care.

And maybe that's enough.

I know what it's like to struggle, but that doesn't mean I can tell you what to do.

Life is about the individual, and each journey is unique.

But we never are truly alone. At least, not for those of us who have someone.

Which is why all I can do is remind you that there's someone who cares.

It might not be a man in the sky, but a nerdy kid with a laptop.

And if that makes you feel better maybe I am worth something to this planet.

Maybe we are not alone.

Tell me.

As you sit there in the corner.

Was it really worth it?

Tell me.

As you dream.

Do you still see her?

Or is there nothing there.

Tell me.

Can you even hear me?

I shout, I scream, I beg.

Watching you writhe with self-destructive glee

Only to feel the reflection of a light now faded

Tell me.

Or should I tell her?

And in the back of your mind there is a whisper of hope

The ashes remnant of what was

And in the back of your mind you always knew where to find her

Tell me.

Do you think you were left alone?

That the sparkling stars or the mysterious moon were not to guide you?

And now, my friend.

Tell me.

Who told you?

Why

I suppose I have questions.

About who I am, why I am here. It's not enough for me to just know that everyone has questions, that everybody is stumbling around in this pointless game with no clue as to the why and wherefore. I need to know. I need to pick myself back up again, after having fallen so low, having sailed so high. Bursting into flames from flying to close to the sun, I lift my charred wings and shake the ash and dust from whence I came, to what I shall return.

I feel hopeless and yet hopeful. I know that the sun shines for us all, yet the warming rays must be sought out. I need to accept the help I have been given and continue on my path upward, out of the dark and gloomy mire of depression which has been my state of being for too long. I need to find a way home, to light and happiness.

If happiness is simply a state of mind, what is it that is keeping me away? I have everything a boy could need, friends, family and extended support. And yet all I feel like doing is breaking down and crying. About all the past and what could have been, about what I have gone through and what I am going through. And I feel that no one knows what it's like to be me, even though people know me better than I know myself and I imagine they have a good idea of what I'm going through.

I just don't know what I need to be happy. I'm always afraid, always running.

I suppose I need to speak to someone about the crazy events that led me to this place, but who would believe me? What do you do with an impossible theory that you can't let go of? How do you deal with the fact that either you or the universe is twisted beyond belief, or that you may have figured either of them out?

I suppose I don't know what to do.

But I suppose the answers will come to me.

What do you do

How do you knock down the man

Who has already beaten himself to the ground

How do you kill the man

Who is nothing more than a shadow of a ghost walking

A fragment of a dream still stalking

Hating the souls he claimed to love

The pasty reflections of a once glorious image

An image stored only in the imagination

Of a devil afraid of his own demons

How do you strike the soul so stricken

With grief and greed and hope forgotten

How do you press the man who is so unimpressed

Yet so hard pressed he is but a flat man

Living in a world too round for him to die

Living in a teardrop, yet afraid to cry

What do you say to the blind to make him see

Or scream to the deaf that he can hear?

How do you terrify the man so afraid

That he invented a world of fear

What does the man alone do

When everyone he loves leaves

When he is left alone to grieve

A love that was never his

A life he never lived

What do you say to the man who is a mountain

But afraid of the mustard seed that would compel him to move

So, where am I?

I’ve announced myself the conqueror of my own torments far too many times. And too many times have these same torments caught up with me before I was completely rid of them. I won’t make that mistake again. A few weeks ago, I last declared myself finally fine. I felt brilliant. And I think I would have remained fine if I had not had an awful chat with a friend leading to a conclusion too painful for me to wrap my head around. So much so that I, ever relentlessly curious; I with a firm belief that acceptance of the truth is the only way forward, I, with the belief that I could conquer anything; had to remand my curiosity, accept a half truth and remain defeated.

I am at a vantage point. Able to look back on my pain and sigh sadly for the poor child so cruelly crushed. Yet no longer the poor child. And I hope, no longer still wallowing in my own pain, but moving forward. I’ve recently discovered myself unable to add two and two together. Unable to put together the most obvious circumstances to form the most reasonable conclusion I could hope to have.

And I’m wondering when I will stumble upon what’s been keeping me from moving forward all this time. But to be honest, with the amount of effort I have spent analyzing every possible scenario, I am sure that I have stumbled upon the answer. I don’t know what I want as far as the future goes. I want it to happen.

And I want the past to be over. Done with. That’s all I could hope for. Maybe it was my stubbornness which prevented me from trying to grieve properly. The desire to be ok ironically kept me from being ok. But I love irony, my life is full of it.

And here I am. Not brilliant. But not completely broken. I think I may be ok. Funny how that word can have so many meanings. It can be a stamp of the highest approval, or it can be a mediocre shrug of the shoulders. So yea, I’m ok. And depending on just how bad, the word will adapt its meaning to me. Sometimes certifiably awesome, sometimes only hanging there. But hopefully never back to where I was.

Not You

You came back. I’ve danced this dance before, heard the echoes of a story too familiar. You came back and things were the same, except different. I was a little bit stronger, and just as unwise. And all I heard were the things I tried to say, hoped to say and ended up not saying.

Wondering how a guy could deserve a second chance. He could have called himself the luckiest guy, he should have, why didn’t he, how didn’t he, it doesn’t matter, he didn’t. Yet I dub him the most unlucky of all guys. If life is cruel and unfair, if Lady Luck smiles only upon those who recognize her face, if the circumstance, the tune, the chord, the faintest of melodies are what shape the decisions you end up making, then he is but unlucky. Maybe I’m being kind to call an imbecile as nothing more than tormented by fate, as the rhyme and reason for absolutely stupidity.

I wish you knew just how much a guy like that should mean. If Gods and men demand a higher form of punctuation to pronounce their significance, he gets none. For he is neither. A noun as common as any. Every morning when he was blessed enough to wake up besides those auburn locks, he should have thanked every angel, every curse and demon that put his path besides yours.

And I stand here, looking. My head turning at every gorgeous face, miniscule hemline and shining pupil. Seeing the beauty and wonder before me, wondering who would be the next. Truth is that you’re not the most beautiful person in the world. I can count many more with better symmetry, style, substance or stance. But there is one thing that makes every face worthless in my eye. They all have the same problem, that same flaw.

They are all, not you.  

And I know that to you, I’m not even a second glance. I know where I stand and I know just how far it is from you. Maybe you’ll never see me as anything more than a child. But it doesn’t really matter, because last night I stumbled up the stairs after I stumbled through the last phrase I uttered to her gorgeous face, awkward and ambiguous and always overly ambitious to anticipate anything more. And I finally shed a tear for someone that wasn’t her who is not worthy to be named.

I don’t know where I am, or where I’ll go from here. I know I’ll hope, I know it will crush me. But like I said, I’ve danced this dance before. And maybe next time, I’ll know the steps. 

Just a Weirdo

Here I am.

Off my high horse. Without the vantage to glare down at the petulant masses. Dirty, rotten sandals replacing the finely crafted leather boots, a mud-soaked tunic clinging to the broken mass that is used to finer silks. I've lost my scales, I can't find the balance. My horse was dying and still my hands cleave to the bloodied sword that brought about my cruel mercy.

It's been a while coming. It started with the shame. Through every battle, every skirmish, my horse kept me safe. I was a mounted knight. Always the one with the higher ground. Above everyone else. I could see their flaws so clearly. I was special. I was more than human. I ruled my own little world and I was better than everything in it.

And through it all, I could have nothing else but my high horse on which I was seated. I would prove just how special I was. I wore the scars of battle proudly, as a testament to one who is fit to sit on such a steed. Yet for all my vantage, I couldn't see what I had become. Then came a misstep. And another. And finally I had to look back at the carnage I had left. And saw what I could never bear to see, and what the stars would be cruel to deign on me again. Those I had hurt from my God-damned high horse. Some who meant the world to me. Some who didn't matter as much. And one whom I had intended to hurt, to mirror the scar embedded on the left side of my chest.

I couldn't believe what I'd become. This was not who I was. This is not who I am. There remains one thing left to do. You don't ride a horse into battle time and again without it becoming a part of you. I swear that I felt the blade carving through flesh as I swung it down towards my horse. And then it was over.

I've thrown down my fine silks and armor. I walk now, a peasant. One of many. Just another weirdo. Another misunderstood soul. The last thing I ever wanted to be and yet everything I was. Human. One of them. This race that I've hated so long for their cruelty and malevolence towards each other. Wretched beings, I cried. But I'm one of them now.

It's different, walking. I feel this is where I was supposed to be all along. I can look people in the eye. Stare into their beautiful eyes stinging with the pain of a thousand hurts as we hold hands and walk together. I'm no better than them. I'm nothing more than just another weirdo. Yet I don't care for my horse, all I want is the chance to look someone in the eye, tell them that I can see their pain and throw my arm around them as we lean on each other down this rugged, beautiful path that we call life.

I'm just another weirdo, and I couldn't be happier.