I'm sad and I'm not sure why. But I like it. I don't want to be happy because I feel like being happy will somehow reduce the meaning of this moment or of my life. I can feel things when I'm sad that I just don't feel when I'm not. I can see the patterns that I refuse to see in normal life.
On the other hand, I'm not studying for midterms.
But that's okay, because right now I can feel the importance of things, and while courses are sort of important, they aren't as important as I usually think they are. This will not end my life.
The more important question is what sort of life I want to live. And maybe it is important that I don't know the answer. Maybe it is as it should be that I can't decide if I want to be a starving artist or a rich hedge fund technologist. Life only lasts so long. It's these little moments of beauty that we need to stop and recognize. I'm not even sure what if beautiful about this moment I've made. I'm just sitting at my computer typing on a blog that I originally thought was going to be cheeky but has suddenly become sincere. And yet something makes it beautiful. this little moment of time I'm making now that could be scripted on the internet forever. And I hope it isn't just the fact that I have the music from American Beauty playing in the background, although that is probably helping.
I can see so many roads stretching out in front of me. I know that I'll wind up on one or another, and that no matter which I choose, there will always be more choices and I'll never get to stop until my journey is completely over. Maybe then I'll have a moment where I can see the journey in its entirety, where I can finally understand what exactly I am. Or maybe I don't want that.
And of all these paths I see, the one that draws me is the one I'm too afraid to take. It is the path of declaring love when I shouldn't. It is the path of starving and screaming and living and trying in vain to be famous and successful at something that maybe I'm not that good at. It is not the safe path.
But what's so exciting about being safe. If I went that way, I know I would retreat into imagination. I would waste my life away reading, playing games, pretending to be something I'm not. And then one day I would wake up and realize that I had been fooling myself all along, and that realization will destroy me.
There's this depth of feeling here in this moment that I know I won't be able to recapture when I'm happy again. All of the numbness of everyday life is gone, and I feel. Sure I might feel like shit, but I'm FEELing something. There's something inside my chest that wants to get out, a palpitation that can't just be my heart. There are tears in my eyes, and that is where they'll stay. And I know I am alive.
I've always wanted to write poetry. I've always wanted to be a poet. I just never have the words. What can you say when life is good? Hell, what can you say when life is bad? I don't know. I don't know what I can say other than what I do. I'm sure you don't understand. I'm speaking in vagaries and generalizations.
I think if there is a God, he doesn't care if things are perfect. I think he was sad one day and wanted to make something, just so that he could point to it, and say, "Hey, look I made that. It's not perfect, but that's okay because it is beautiful. Maybe it's beautiful because it is not perfect."
That's what I've always wondered. Isn't it our imperfections that make us beautiful? The veins that I can see running down the side of your face. The way you snort when you laugh. The times you get mad when there isn't anything to be upset about. The burdens you put on yourself when you know you can't take any more. This is what makes us beautiful. These little struggles against the universe are what makes us people.
And right now I'm picturing your face. You probably don't know it. Even if you read these words, and there is no guarantee you will. What I can guarantee is that I will not tell you. I will never tell you. I'm afraid. I don't know what I want from you, and it would be unfair to put that on you. So I will bear it alone, perhaps into my grave. I will always wonder what could have been, and even now I realize that it might be still be. But I also know that I will not let it be.
I always I assume that I'm imposing. I don't just assume in this case. I know that I would be imposing. And you deserve better than that. You deserve to be happy. Maybe I deserve to be unhappy, and maybe I want to be unhappy. Either way, us being together could only result in one of two things: us both being unhappy or both being happy. And I can just feel that that is not what is store for us. That is not what the universe wants.
And I will just go on finding the little pieces of beauty where I can. I will do like I did in high school the one time - I will watch your taillights fade into the distance as I am covered with the moisture of a misty night under a red sky, and I will feel.
That's what I'm most afraid of. I can deal with being alone. I've been picturing being a hermit since I hit puberty. I can deal with failure, and rejection, and losing my family and friends. I gone through all of that. I can deal with being a virgin, and I can deal with whatever else the world throws at me. But I cannot, could not ever deal with not feeling. I lose it sometimes, and right now I feel as if those times were shorn out of my life. I fear death. I fear it more than anything else. I fear it because I'm afraid that when it comes I will no longer feel. I would welcome hell itself, if just for the continued sensation.
So what are you doing here? Are you here to laugh because you know me? Are you here to laugh because pain is funny? Are you here to laugh because of my witticisms and charm? Are you here by accident? Are you here to cry?
Every day I can feel myself becoming more accustomed to the world. I used to stop and look at things. I walk too fast now. I don't remember how I got places. I only remember arriving.
Sometimes I wonder if I truly believe in people. Do I think that other people feel like me? I'm not sure. Sometimes it seems like I'm playing a game, where the goal is to get people to like me and my tactic is to be the most pathetic person in the room. Everyone wants to pet the sad puppy. But what if underneath that is a level of cynicism I won't even allow myself to recognize? And if that's there, why do I care what people think? Am I saving up for a day when I can use it against them? Am I preparing for when things inevitably go south? Or do I genuinely like people and want to be around them?
I know that I hate people. In the plural. Crowds annoy me. I think the masses are stupid and scary. But do I like persons as much as I think I do? What if I am a sociopath and I don't even know it.
And now I'm thinking of you again, and my stomach jumps back up into my chest. That can't be the reaction of a sociopath, can it?
Sometimes I wonder what I am. I feel so separated from other people. I can never bring myself to say "we". I also never call people by name. It's always you or hey or a gesture. I remember reading someone saying, "We are born alone, and we die alone." I wonder if we must live in the middle alone. Everything I know about everything comes in through my senses, but I know that my senses can deceive me. Like Descartes, the only thing I can be reasonably sure of is my own existence. But I want you to exist, and I want you to love me, and I want endless nights snuggling and whispering little nothings to each other, and I want to feel your skin against mine, and I want to watch sappy, romantic movies with you, and I want to ask you about the beautiful things in your life and the small things and the strange things, and I want you to be one of the beautiful things in my life, and I just don't know how to say any of that.
So I write it down on an anonymous blog, knowing that even if you do read this, you probably won't think it is about you. But it is. And it is about me, and it is about life and love.
I think I used to be happy. I remember that when I was little, the thing I disliked the most was being bored. I always had to be doing something. Maybe that is happiness - the dichotomy between being bored and entertained. Maybe I just know too many things now and I can never return to the Eden of my childhood, and the best I can hope for are moments like this. These little pieces of clarity.
A long time ago, my life would have been preordained. If I had lived to adulthood, I would have had an arranged marriage, expected duties, a life laid out for me with nothing to choose. I would be free of existential crisis, because who has time for a crisis when they need to be working the fields? Maybe I would have been religious, and I would have thought that there was something good waiting for me after my death. Maybe I would even look forward to it, like a birthday when I knew I would be getting a really good present. Maybe I would love my predestined wife and our children, and maybe I would play a hand in shaping their destinies. It could have been a life.
It seems like there's so much more talk these days. You can put whatever you want on the internet. And soon it is going to be that anyone with a long pdf file can self-publish a book. And for all that extra talk, for all the quintillions of bits zipping around, do we listen any more than we used to? How much do I know about the people around me?
And now I'm back to you. How much do I know about you? It feels like I don't know anything, but I know your face and I can hear your voice even now. I don't know what you would say. Or perhaps what you will say. I can only tell you that I have never wanted to hurt you.
I've been writing for so long now, but the words keep coming. I can't make them stop. Something more wants to get out, and I won't know what it is until it gets here.
I don't know what is art. Maybe when you throw a bunch of people into a room and out of their minds and bodies and opinions and talents comes something new, maybe that is art. Maybe art doesn't need any structure or purpose. Maybe every game of charades and pictionary and Cranium is art. Maybe we are just surrounded by art and we don't know to call it by what it is.
Someday science might outstrip art. Someday we might go to the stars and ultimately escape this planet. Maybe we'll even abandon it to its fate, to be swallowed whole by the sun billions of years from now. Everything that is art now, every thought that any of us have will be lost. Will it all have been for nothing.
And I come back to you. I imagine wiping a tear from your cheek. I imagine telling you that everything will be okay. That it will all work out in the end. But this time I know what I should tell you. Maybe I wouldn't actually say this, but I should. I should tell you, "Life is what we make of it. It is full of little twists and turns that we shouldn't expect to all be good. But in the end, life is beautiful, however short and painful. And perhaps what really matters is love. Our love for other people, our love for each other, will leave a mark. It may not be physical or electrical, but something about our love influences the entire universe, and long after we are gone, someone or something will be here and they will know that we lived and we loved. And that will make of this worth it. Our love is timeless and perfect, no matter how flawed and transient we are. And I love you so much." Maybe I should leave out the last part. Maybe I should never say anything like this.
And maybe I don't love you. Maybe I don't even know you. Not really. Certainly, this can't be love. But I feel something, and I want for it to be love. I want to have that feeling, and I want you to have that feeling for me.
Maybe then I won't have to be sad to feel.
No comments:
Post a Comment