Vagabond lot we travel from one place to the next searching for a permanent existence.
I haven't written in a long time. I read back my journal and I feel like after all of these years, all the hardships, I am no farther in my life than when I started this journey.
Lost friends and burned bridges.
Destruction of my mind and body
Loss of identity.
Sometimes I want to talk to myself, when I was 13. Tell myself to take a different path. Tell myself to be happy. The pain I felt back then, just got worse over the years. Time added guilt and regret.
My life is not horrible, by any means. I haven't been beaten every single day, unless you count my mind. I don't abuse drugs...I have a roof over my head, food in my stomach and clothes on my back (even tho some of them have seen better days).
So why am I the way I am? Why do I feel like the weight of the world rests on my shoulders. Sometimes I wish I was more apathetic to counterbalance my empathy. But I am still a bit of both.
My relationships with people are strained. I have been hurt so much that trying to let someone in and let them know what I am always feeling, tells me that I am just asking for my feelings to be thrown back in my face.
I still have dark feelings, angry and hateful feelings. I still wish to take those emotions out on my skin, just to feel something besides darkness. I still hurt. It has been 8 years since the death of my Aunt Jessie and yet I still cry myself to sleep over losing her. I talk to her and my friend Foxy all the time. I miss my great-grandmother and my great-grandfather. I still blame my great-grandmother's side of the family for letting her die the way she did.
I blame my father for my anger at life. I blame him for not being there. For walking out on me when I needed him to be there. I blame him for hitting me, for hitting my mother. I blame him for my brother, who never got the chance to hate him. I blame myself for missing him. I wish my father was there to see be graduate and I wish he was there to see me earn my first gold medal. I wish he was there to see me fall so he could help me stand back up.
Is it wrong to need someone like that? Not to validate my life but to help me find my identity?. I love my mother and growing up with just her was probably the best thing for me, but I am left to wonder what I would have become if he was still in my life? Would I be more abusive, or more submissive? Would I have grown up happy?
I was happy at points, but as I became older I became more withdrawn. More hateful of a world around me that was so self-absorbed that it didn't see an attack until it was too late. A world so filled with the need for things to validate existance when all you need to prove you exist is just for someone to see you. To look into your eyes and acknowledge that you are present. A schizophrenic is supposed to see things that aren't there. But what if they are there, and we are the ones with the problems?
I grew to distrust the person I saw in the mirror. I didn't recognize her. She wasn't me. I would stare at her, wondering why she was there. I knew who created her, it wasn't me. She the creation of those who had the most influence in my life. My mother, my girlfriend, my brother, my sister, my coaches, my friends. She was the strong, powerful, a scary person who could not be destroyed. I wanted to destroy her. I hated her. She wasn't me.
The person I am, a vagabond. I person who thirsted for power, thirsted for knowledge, and desired rest. I am a person who longs for weakness, for it means that I can breathe for a while. Give my body and mind a chance to slow down long enough to regroup. I am a person who battles with her fight and flight emotions, desiring the ability to walk onto a plane and never return. To float away in a current and presumed dead. I am a person who longed for death so I could be reborn into something that I wanted to be.
But what do I want to be? I want to be everything. I want to go from one place to the next, leaving behind a print that cannot be taken away. I want to walk into and out of people's lives, sometimes without them knowing I was there, but feeling that they were different because of my presence. I want my children to be my words, my immortality and my mortality stuck within pages that will yellow with time. I want to be the person who sleeps under a bridge one month, and dines in the finest restaurants in the next.
My existance is one that fights the socially constructed belief that success comes with objects. That money is needed to be happy and one cannot be happy if one is alone. I do not want to die alone. I don't want the world to die without me by its side. I want to look into the world's eyes and apologize for allowing it to be abused. For allowing the ground to be soaked with blood. For every inch of this earth bleeds and cries. It is why I am never without a tissue or a shoulder.
I have not had the hardest life. Nor the easiest as it would seem. However, my confliction lies within my heart without a sole perpetrator to blame for its angst. My 13 year old self never had the chance to understand this, fighting to conform to the needs of others while also adhearing to their advice of self-identification. The result?
A contradiction in search of a place that will never exist.
Lost friends and burned bridges.
Destruction of my mind and body
Loss of identity.
Sometimes I want to talk to myself, when I was 13. Tell myself to take a different path. Tell myself to be happy. The pain I felt back then, just got worse over the years. Time added guilt and regret.
My life is not horrible, by any means. I haven't been beaten every single day, unless you count my mind. I don't abuse drugs...I have a roof over my head, food in my stomach and clothes on my back (even tho some of them have seen better days).
So why am I the way I am? Why do I feel like the weight of the world rests on my shoulders. Sometimes I wish I was more apathetic to counterbalance my empathy. But I am still a bit of both.
My relationships with people are strained. I have been hurt so much that trying to let someone in and let them know what I am always feeling, tells me that I am just asking for my feelings to be thrown back in my face.
I still have dark feelings, angry and hateful feelings. I still wish to take those emotions out on my skin, just to feel something besides darkness. I still hurt. It has been 8 years since the death of my Aunt Jessie and yet I still cry myself to sleep over losing her. I talk to her and my friend Foxy all the time. I miss my great-grandmother and my great-grandfather. I still blame my great-grandmother's side of the family for letting her die the way she did.
I blame my father for my anger at life. I blame him for not being there. For walking out on me when I needed him to be there. I blame him for hitting me, for hitting my mother. I blame him for my brother, who never got the chance to hate him. I blame myself for missing him. I wish my father was there to see be graduate and I wish he was there to see me earn my first gold medal. I wish he was there to see me fall so he could help me stand back up.
Is it wrong to need someone like that? Not to validate my life but to help me find my identity?. I love my mother and growing up with just her was probably the best thing for me, but I am left to wonder what I would have become if he was still in my life? Would I be more abusive, or more submissive? Would I have grown up happy?
I was happy at points, but as I became older I became more withdrawn. More hateful of a world around me that was so self-absorbed that it didn't see an attack until it was too late. A world so filled with the need for things to validate existance when all you need to prove you exist is just for someone to see you. To look into your eyes and acknowledge that you are present. A schizophrenic is supposed to see things that aren't there. But what if they are there, and we are the ones with the problems?
I grew to distrust the person I saw in the mirror. I didn't recognize her. She wasn't me. I would stare at her, wondering why she was there. I knew who created her, it wasn't me. She the creation of those who had the most influence in my life. My mother, my girlfriend, my brother, my sister, my coaches, my friends. She was the strong, powerful, a scary person who could not be destroyed. I wanted to destroy her. I hated her. She wasn't me.
The person I am, a vagabond. I person who thirsted for power, thirsted for knowledge, and desired rest. I am a person who longs for weakness, for it means that I can breathe for a while. Give my body and mind a chance to slow down long enough to regroup. I am a person who battles with her fight and flight emotions, desiring the ability to walk onto a plane and never return. To float away in a current and presumed dead. I am a person who longed for death so I could be reborn into something that I wanted to be.
But what do I want to be? I want to be everything. I want to go from one place to the next, leaving behind a print that cannot be taken away. I want to walk into and out of people's lives, sometimes without them knowing I was there, but feeling that they were different because of my presence. I want my children to be my words, my immortality and my mortality stuck within pages that will yellow with time. I want to be the person who sleeps under a bridge one month, and dines in the finest restaurants in the next.
My existance is one that fights the socially constructed belief that success comes with objects. That money is needed to be happy and one cannot be happy if one is alone. I do not want to die alone. I don't want the world to die without me by its side. I want to look into the world's eyes and apologize for allowing it to be abused. For allowing the ground to be soaked with blood. For every inch of this earth bleeds and cries. It is why I am never without a tissue or a shoulder.
I have not had the hardest life. Nor the easiest as it would seem. However, my confliction lies within my heart without a sole perpetrator to blame for its angst. My 13 year old self never had the chance to understand this, fighting to conform to the needs of others while also adhearing to their advice of self-identification. The result?
A contradiction in search of a place that will never exist.