Why does my heart feel so bad
I looked in the mirror just now, and for some reason, or perhaps many reasons, I looked older. Not because my face has changed, not much at least, but because my eyes told me so. They told me what I already know. That I am older. That life has made me older.
I am so tired of these empty dreams. These unfulfilled hopes. These shadows of who I wanted to be haunting the corners of my thoughts, of my eyes...I am so tired of treading in place, always the same person, always me. Changed yet fundamentally unchanged. Wiser but never wise. Older but never old. My heart speaks out to me, “why do you hurt the way you do?” And all I can ever reply is “because you made me the way I am. He made me the way I am. God. He gave me this sad heart of mine. He made me the way that I am.”
So close to my eyes falling shut and still I struggle through the vodka and the tears to write down these words, to continue this relentless, daunting, never-ending search for vindication. For proof. That these words that float endlessly through my being all day every day actually make sense. That they can string together to form coherent thoughts. That they, somehow, through being read, and known, even just by myself, will take on the form of relief. That they will remind me that my soul is revealable. It is show-able. At least, in some shape or form, no matter how shallow or self-absorbed. No matter how they barely scratch the surface of all that I am. Somehow, maybe, somehow they will bring me relief.
These days all seem so similar to each other. One endless day after another, some long, some short, all weighing exactly the same in this unexplainable conundrum they call life. I try to fish for the reasons. I try to figure out the explanations to every minuscule moment of time that slips through my fingers. That I experience. That I feel. That I live. I try to come up with a reason that I “deserve” the time I am handed. And I always wind up back here. To this thought that no matter how hard I try, the answers will always be somehow avoidant of my grasp. The days will pass, the nights will drag, and every moment I have existed will always amount to this. Nothing more than this. Than right now. In this moment. As I dream of the days I wish to see and yearn for the days that have long since passed. I will never be complete. As long as I live, I will never be complete.
Yes, my eyes are heavy, but me head is clear. It always is. Until love comes in. the only drug that could ever change me. Love. The only thing could ever break me. Love. I try to explain to myself that love is just a faded out instinct. To love and be loved. To attach and be attached. But my heart always fights that logic. My heart always tries to tell me that love is the one thing that is more, that is greater than, all of this. It tries to tell me that love is the greatest thing of all, the only thing deserving of every feeling we possess - that love is the only thing that can EVOKE every feeling we could possibly possess...but my pride, it says otherwise. My “common sense”, it says “babe, why do you allow so many things to rise above your sense of self-control?” And I always answer, drink in hand, or pill in mouth, or nicotine surging through my brain - “what else could ever feel realer than your loss of self-control? What else could ever enable you to step outside of yourself and outside of life more than, better than, these things that make you cry? These things that make your soul ache and burn...these things that remind you of what any sense of true purpose seems to stand against and yet what it exists in consequence of...Love. They remind you that you've discovered the highest of highs, and so must know the lowest of lows, that with every single thing you love, no matter how big or small, or how lightly or how ferociously that you love it, you will know what it is for that love to ache...you will know what it feels like for that love to hurt you, to make every piece of you ache, because everything you love, you let in, will do exactly what you never intended for it to do. It will hurt you. Because it can. Simply, because it can. And so it will. Without reason or cause. Without any real sense of justice OR true definition of betrayal. Because we all bear our own crosses that we are nailed to and drag along behind us. We all are out to love while fighting to protect ourselves from the pain that love inevitably brings. And so we are always hurting each other. Most of the time without even meaning to. Without even seeing it coming our way or meaning to send it abroad. But why, why...why haven't I seen the love that is great enough to match the ache that love has brought me? Why can't I seem to keep the already loosened grip I have on the reality of every one of our existences in this deceitful world? How can I know what I know, understand what I understand, beware of what I beware, and yet somehow still dare to hope, to dream, of an undying love? Of a love so imperfect, so realistic, so beyond the rules we can imagine, that it exists as an undying love? How unwitting I must truly be to dare to look forward to an inexistent love that will no longer scorn me as much, if not MORE than, it embraces me, How bereft of wit I must be to give into this want. How unwitting.
How primitively unknowing. How incessantly naive.
All I can seem to muster lately is simply the will to imagine how things will be once I find what it takes, or requires, for me to change. For the better. The “better.” Then maybe I'll be what they all imagined me to be. What I gave into imagining myself to be. Then maybe I'll find what it takes to finally find some peace. That sense of complete that doesn't have to leave you in the middle of the night. The sense of peace that you can rely on - that you can call forth when you need it to be there for you the most. Not like a person. Not like a hope. Not like a dream. But something realer. Peace. Real Peace. The kind that doesn't have to change. Not like the rest of the world, like the rest of existence. The sense of peace that you can make a part of yourself. Because we never change. We think we do, but we don't. We just learn. And Grow. But we never change. We are who we were always meant to be. I want the Peace that is just like me. Never-changing. The peace that I can write about and look back on three years later looking for answers, for explanations or history-based patterns to explain my problems away with, only to realize that I've always just been who I am. Never different. Always just me. With more time behind my eyes. With more pain behind my heart. But always just me. That kind of peace. I want that kind of peace. I need that kind of peace.
Because the beautiful things I surround myself with won't save me. I try to make them but they won't. The sun on my ceiling feels like it will take forever to be complete and even when it is, it will only lead to the next project, and the next, and the next...anything to fill these empty hours of uselessness, anything to surround myself with images that bring at least somewhat whimsical feelings that are imaginative enough to take me out of this hell hole of existence and all the pain that reality brings with it. The tree that took me hours upon endless hours to create and perfect is already falling apart. The paint is peeling, the glad wrap is tearing, the ribbon is falling...just like everything else I've built up and put together in my life. I'm always so excited as I'm putting it together, so hopeful of what the end result will be (what I want it to be) and so consumed in the simple motions of carrying out the task that I even forget to look forward towards the end, towards what it is that I'm even working toward...and then, when it's all done and over with, when it's finally “completed”, it starts to fall apart. Even as I'm making it, it already starts to fall apart. A crack here, a peel there, a chip over here and there and everywhere and I am just so sick of having to go back and repair all that I love that I wonder what the point is to repairing anything at all. Maybe we are meant to build things up and watch them fall. The inevitability of everything. To be built up and to fall. To live and to die. On a big scale or a small one, everything lives and dies. Everything is created and is destroyed. Somehow. Somehow...
So if you could save me from this relentlessness, would you? Would you show me your idea of the truth, or would you just talk about it all the time, waiting for me to give in, waiting for me to say “yea, you sound like you got it right, let me follow you and all your ways...” Or would you just show me. Just show me. But I tried to show him for 3 years, 4 really, that I could be all that he ever needed, all that he could ever possibly ask for or WANT out of “something as arbitrary as life”, and he never saw it. Not until it was gone. Not until the fall. He lived the building up of my love for him, and he watched the fall, and then he knew. He finally knew, deep down inside of his soul, that it was real. It was always real. Because that is what life is. The building up and falling down of everything. Everything. I never want to love anyone or anything ever again and yet I want to love everyone and everything all at once, all at the same time. If only someone could tell me the right way to be. If only someone knew what the right way even is. If only God could whisper in my ear again what it is I need to hear. I heard you once Lord. It took me a year to act upon it, but I heard you. I heard you. It just took me a while to believe. Can you really blame me? Can you really blame any of us? Because if you really wanted us to believe in you, in all of this, in a right way or a wrong way, then wouldn't you have been more forthright in your approach? But instead you hide behind ambiguity, just like everyone of us. Letting others speak for you. Letting us believe what we choose to. What our ?hearts? tell us to. What a crock, that we were born with free will, whatever free will is anyway. That we were born with the IDEA of freewill, forever tormented by the endless possibilities of it all. Forever locked in our own incapabilities to decide for our own damn selves. What a gift. What a fucking gift. Free will...
Sometimes my soul feels so lost that I can't seem to do anything but stay still, feeling the gravity of the planet pulling me towards its center, keeping me, keeping us all, aligned with the moon and the sun and the stars. All moving together unknowingly, unconsciously. All swaying to the same energy that keeps our feet planted to the earth, all existing together without the knowledge of why we exist at all, all living and searching for the answers to questions in our hearts and minds that may never be truly answered. Barely being able to keep our eyes open as we put together the thoughts and letters that spell out the words we abuse in order to extend some sort of invisible arm towards the rest of the universe, waiting to be seen, waiting to be known, just for who we are. We are all waiting lo be known just for who we are. And nothing more. Nothing less. Nothing else. Why do I always want to love the ones who aren't ready to be loved. Why do I always try to know the ones who aren't willing to be known. Why am I always waiting. For something. Always.