Grabbing life by the hairy nuts - I come short
From about twenty feet away I saw a kid get beat up. I saw the blood gush from his head. I saw the his enemy run down the train platform as fast as he could. I saw the kid yell out, "I'm ready to kill somebody," as he tried, but failed to get himself off the ground. I witnessed this with my friend Emily, a small-town Minnesota girl who was in town for my birthday this weekend. She was terrified; it was nothing like she's ever seen before. She was scared for her saftey, appalled and disturbed. I was terrified too, but in a completely different way. I was terrified because, as I watched this all go down, I felt nothing. It was as if I were watching the event as if it were on television. Could I have possibly grown so cold to hard to the world that I was incapable of feeling anything whatsoever. It's so easy, yet so scary, to simply brush something like that off as a sociological casualty. I'd like to boost myself up, saying it's pointless to care, there's nothing that I could have done. But that's not enough; I don't want to be desensitized.
Apart from that, this weekend has been intense. Again, not for reasons that would normally come to mind. Rather, I was forced to face the lies that I've been telling myself for god knows how long. I'm sick of pretending to be the person that I want to be, yet am too lazy to become. I don't think that I've been phony all these years, but that I've been a half-assed version of what I try to present myself as. Perhaps that's why it's so hard for me to make a relationship last more than a couple weeks. Laziness it my vice. It's the reason why I go through so many phases of depression. I thought that moving to Chicago would change things, that it would force me to step out and grab life by the hairy nuts, but no, instead I fall back into the same stagnant patterns as I did before. I go the same hang-out spots. I take the same routes to work. I see the same people. The creepy crud of malaise sneaks back into my psyche. This weekend I learned that if I'm actually going to be the person I want to be, and not just pose the role, I need to make changes now. I need to find what's keeping me back and destroy it. Or else nothing will ever change.
In that sense, as frazzled as I am right now, I suppose that this birthday has brought upon more knowledge and growth than anyone before it. And isn't that what getting older is all about? Anyway, where do i go from here? I'm not yet sure, all I know is that something's going to change, and this is going to be a very good year.
Apart from that, this weekend has been intense. Again, not for reasons that would normally come to mind. Rather, I was forced to face the lies that I've been telling myself for god knows how long. I'm sick of pretending to be the person that I want to be, yet am too lazy to become. I don't think that I've been phony all these years, but that I've been a half-assed version of what I try to present myself as. Perhaps that's why it's so hard for me to make a relationship last more than a couple weeks. Laziness it my vice. It's the reason why I go through so many phases of depression. I thought that moving to Chicago would change things, that it would force me to step out and grab life by the hairy nuts, but no, instead I fall back into the same stagnant patterns as I did before. I go the same hang-out spots. I take the same routes to work. I see the same people. The creepy crud of malaise sneaks back into my psyche. This weekend I learned that if I'm actually going to be the person I want to be, and not just pose the role, I need to make changes now. I need to find what's keeping me back and destroy it. Or else nothing will ever change.
In that sense, as frazzled as I am right now, I suppose that this birthday has brought upon more knowledge and growth than anyone before it. And isn't that what getting older is all about? Anyway, where do i go from here? I'm not yet sure, all I know is that something's going to change, and this is going to be a very good year.