the unexamined life is so much easier to live.
"Ever get the feeling that you're living at the mall?" says the kid who works at Journeys, the shoe store with those rad converse high-tops in the window that I check out every time I pass by.
"Yes! Oh, god, yes," I say, because that is my life: seven days a week, forty hours a week, thirty-one days a month and I am at the mall. I see kids who work there more than I see the people I consider my best friends. Hell, I see some people who shop there more than I see my own mother. And I'm OK with that. I mean, I'm happy. I mean, I'm not unhappy.
But this morning, by the color of my eyes and taste of my tongue, I must still have some of that old masochistic penchant for red wine and vicious circles. Old habits die hard, hangovers don't just fade away, and I swear to god, I've repeated so much of this history that my entire life could be edited down to a single post-it note.
These sort of things always start out with a bottle of hair dye: twenty-five minutes and an ounce of cancer later, bam! New hair color = new personality = new life = new start = new me. I'm constantly trying to kill myself off to make room for another chance to kill myself off. I get some sort of sick pleasure out of this: dragging myself down, throwing myself from cliffs and windows, bleeding and burning and smoldering and dying in the ashes of my pathetic little life, and then dusting myself off, brushing newly-dyed red hair and flying into the next day.
Truthfully, though? All these self-inflicted wounds were never really cut that deep. My life is the culmination of "not ___ enoughs" piling up on top of each other: not pushy enough, not smart enough, not dedicated enough, not crazy enough, not connected enough, not hungry enough, not cute, not fat, not ugly, not normal, not tall, short, thin, pretty, anything enough to be anything more than what I am.
And I know I'm just desperately grasping for strings to connect the times between What Is and What Could Have Been. I know I'm not just getting through every day anymore. I know I don't really suck at life, and I know I have always been so fucking lucky to always, always have found the most amazing people to surround myself with, but I swear, everytime I close my eyes, I'm standing on the edge of a mountain, that place where the sidewalk just drops off into this vortex of nothingness swirling below and I'm looking down at all the people running through their meaningless actions of newspapers and toothbrushes and the sun is coming up behind me now and oh, god, it's so perfect the way everything moves and pulses and it's life, it's motherfucking life, and we're totally doing it, and it's just so right and perfect and painful and christ, all these memories of times and people and places are tingling on the surface of my skin like a million tiny bubbles and I think I am ripping in half because I just wanted to show you, I just wanted to know that we are more than the money and the motions, but I have conveniently forgotten that the space between us is infinitely split in two, our distance is infinitely dividable, and though we might say we're touching, we'll never be close enough.
"Yes! Oh, god, yes," I say, because that is my life: seven days a week, forty hours a week, thirty-one days a month and I am at the mall. I see kids who work there more than I see the people I consider my best friends. Hell, I see some people who shop there more than I see my own mother. And I'm OK with that. I mean, I'm happy. I mean, I'm not unhappy.
But this morning, by the color of my eyes and taste of my tongue, I must still have some of that old masochistic penchant for red wine and vicious circles. Old habits die hard, hangovers don't just fade away, and I swear to god, I've repeated so much of this history that my entire life could be edited down to a single post-it note.
These sort of things always start out with a bottle of hair dye: twenty-five minutes and an ounce of cancer later, bam! New hair color = new personality = new life = new start = new me. I'm constantly trying to kill myself off to make room for another chance to kill myself off. I get some sort of sick pleasure out of this: dragging myself down, throwing myself from cliffs and windows, bleeding and burning and smoldering and dying in the ashes of my pathetic little life, and then dusting myself off, brushing newly-dyed red hair and flying into the next day.
Truthfully, though? All these self-inflicted wounds were never really cut that deep. My life is the culmination of "not ___ enoughs" piling up on top of each other: not pushy enough, not smart enough, not dedicated enough, not crazy enough, not connected enough, not hungry enough, not cute, not fat, not ugly, not normal, not tall, short, thin, pretty, anything enough to be anything more than what I am.
And I know I'm just desperately grasping for strings to connect the times between What Is and What Could Have Been. I know I'm not just getting through every day anymore. I know I don't really suck at life, and I know I have always been so fucking lucky to always, always have found the most amazing people to surround myself with, but I swear, everytime I close my eyes, I'm standing on the edge of a mountain, that place where the sidewalk just drops off into this vortex of nothingness swirling below and I'm looking down at all the people running through their meaningless actions of newspapers and toothbrushes and the sun is coming up behind me now and oh, god, it's so perfect the way everything moves and pulses and it's life, it's motherfucking life, and we're totally doing it, and it's just so right and perfect and painful and christ, all these memories of times and people and places are tingling on the surface of my skin like a million tiny bubbles and I think I am ripping in half because I just wanted to show you, I just wanted to know that we are more than the money and the motions, but I have conveniently forgotten that the space between us is infinitely split in two, our distance is infinitely dividable, and though we might say we're touching, we'll never be close enough.