Got all these knife-like feelings, heading door-to-door
I remember one day over the summer I was walking around in the back neighborhood of Tomball my parents live in, just sort of slumming it out where the sprawl met the woods. This was while my life was falling apart in spades. I was a big crumbly building is what. Anyway, I came to where the trees had been cut down in a wide swath to make room for power lines running north, and I remember wanting nothing more than to follow those lines as far as they went, to other neighborhoods, other houses, other lives. To see the other or to be the other, who knows.
It's been awhile since I've blogged about my life. Between now and that moment where I was sweating through my shirt and thinking of a way to disappear-if it was to be marching off into the wilderness or if it was drinking until I had whittled my liver all the way down or if it was filling my pockets with heavy stones and walking into the ocean or what doesn’t matter anymore-but between now and that moment a lot has changed. I get accused all the time of writing autobiography when I write Things That Can’t Be Taken Back, but it’s no more autobiography than anyone’s fiction. Writers cobble stuff together. Some of it is fact, but all of it is true. So it’s kind of funny to me when someone says that I’m so honest and open about my life in my writing. Because it’s not my life, you see. My life is quite different from the things that I write, was quite different, will always be quite different.
So here, I’m saying some things about my life, for those of you who are curious or who I’ve had to leave behind somewhere along the way: For a long time I wanted to die and I was serious. It hurt a lot of people. These days I don’t. The people are still probably hurt. I made a lot of mistakes, and those mistakes are something that I live with and against. Now I’m really pretty happy. I still have anxiety and depression sometimes, and I still have a lot of uncertainty, but it’s like those things skate along the surface most of the time.
I’m proud of the work I’m doing. I think it has value. I get breathless about it and wake up some days feeling like I have sentences to write like it’s stitching up open wounds. I have a lot of wonderful friends. Some of them are as insane as I am, either in general or about putting words to life. I have a few enemies, because it’s fun to have enemies. I give them nicknames and say the cruelest things. I can’t seem to help myself. I’m seeing a girl who thinks I’m swell. I think she’s swell too. I find myself thinking about her in the gaps between other thoughts. These things are all very good for me. What I'm saying is I wouldn't follow the power lines today for anything.