If only a moment
Right now, I am in my bedroom, slowly undoing the results of a decade of my own laziness. Cleaning and organizing my stuff has been long overdue. I was doing this earlier, and I have too much on my mind to sleep. It gives me the same clarity as when I go out to walk, or driving for the sake of losing myself in the chorus of my radios and the promise of the next road. It's nice to be free of conversation and let serendipity take charge for a while, before school starts and my schedule has less time for the one-shot jobs that sustain me.
My mind today is focused around one specific feeling that's recurring in my life lately - if there is a word for it, I have yet to find it. If others know it as I know it, I could never tell. I suppose in that way it's similar to the problem of other minds. Nonetheless, I feel it constantly from those close to me these days.
Socially, I could say I'm doing alright, but most of those around me are unraveling. The suburbs disgust me, though the problems I find here are by no means a local phenomenon.
Too many abusive parents, venting their own sense of failure by damaging their only clear success - their children, the only proof that some of them can even function at the level of animals, if not as a cultural being. A variety of reasons, from what I see, all seem to stem from a lack of clearly defining oneself relative to one's environment. What could you ever say to such a vile person who created such a radiant individual from their own immaturity?
What am I even able to do about it? I've finally gotten the hang of keeping a straight face, and suppressing the fight-or-flight reaction that swells in my head like an allergic reaction to ingesting the tainted small talk and handshakes of those who have let their futures down so thoroughly. How do you influence the integrity of a relationship between two of your friends, when their relationship is shaken at the foundation by the echoes of a mother who gestates her own victim?
Did she believe me, back then, when I told her how beautiful her scars were but couldn't vocalize why? Would he be able to listen to me, and better keep his own damage from spreading to his girlfriend?
...and back to the nameless feeling my thoughts are orbiting. The soft feeling of another's reluctant inability to trust you fully, and the knowledge it evokes that nothing in your power could ever prove your convictions to them. It sends shivers up my spine as it unfolds from my memories of running my fingertips over her self-inflicted scars, or the vocal quiver of any betrayed-yet-sane child reviewing the consequences of their sanity being questioned to feed the ego of those who are supposed to be caregivers - their hospitalization, medication, or the fear that I'd give their stigma any weight.
What I wouldn't give to have had this insight back then. Maybe I can figure out what to do with it now, at least.
My mind today is focused around one specific feeling that's recurring in my life lately - if there is a word for it, I have yet to find it. If others know it as I know it, I could never tell. I suppose in that way it's similar to the problem of other minds. Nonetheless, I feel it constantly from those close to me these days.
Socially, I could say I'm doing alright, but most of those around me are unraveling. The suburbs disgust me, though the problems I find here are by no means a local phenomenon.
Too many abusive parents, venting their own sense of failure by damaging their only clear success - their children, the only proof that some of them can even function at the level of animals, if not as a cultural being. A variety of reasons, from what I see, all seem to stem from a lack of clearly defining oneself relative to one's environment. What could you ever say to such a vile person who created such a radiant individual from their own immaturity?
What am I even able to do about it? I've finally gotten the hang of keeping a straight face, and suppressing the fight-or-flight reaction that swells in my head like an allergic reaction to ingesting the tainted small talk and handshakes of those who have let their futures down so thoroughly. How do you influence the integrity of a relationship between two of your friends, when their relationship is shaken at the foundation by the echoes of a mother who gestates her own victim?
Did she believe me, back then, when I told her how beautiful her scars were but couldn't vocalize why? Would he be able to listen to me, and better keep his own damage from spreading to his girlfriend?
...and back to the nameless feeling my thoughts are orbiting. The soft feeling of another's reluctant inability to trust you fully, and the knowledge it evokes that nothing in your power could ever prove your convictions to them. It sends shivers up my spine as it unfolds from my memories of running my fingertips over her self-inflicted scars, or the vocal quiver of any betrayed-yet-sane child reviewing the consequences of their sanity being questioned to feed the ego of those who are supposed to be caregivers - their hospitalization, medication, or the fear that I'd give their stigma any weight.
What I wouldn't give to have had this insight back then. Maybe I can figure out what to do with it now, at least.