pg. 19-23
"In darkness I am safe. In darkness. I feel good and cold, alone and dead. I can see my fingers in the light that comes through the window. Overhead, I hear police choppers. The traffic roars and howls. I'm past it all, way past it. Seen enough to know that I can't win. I can't even play with them. They'll just kill me to prove the were right about something. It means everything to them to be right all the time. For myself, I don't care. I don't have a personal anything. It's just another thing for them to come and take from you and shove down your throat. The less you have the less they have to hurt you with, that's the way I see it. I don't like it when they hurt me. It's all I can do not to mutilate them. Is it a shame that I can't accept love? Am I too burned out to move towards what will keep me alive or too smart to get pulled into someone else's world. I only feel safe thinking of death. It's all I think about these days. I look at people. They don't know what I know. I talk to them they have nothing to tell me that matters. What is important to them means nothing to me. I am from another world. In their world I am extinct. I was murdered years ago. I look right through their brains, out the back of their heads and fix on the beyond. Once you're down with death, you have something that keeps you distant from others because you know what's around the corner. When you see people go by you can tell who knows and who doesn't. You don't want to know the ones who do because they are involved with the same nightmare you are. You don't want to know the ones that don't either because they are prey waiting to get taken out. You're alone all the way. The times I have tried to get close to someone resulted in me feeling threatened and weak. When you allow yourself to trust yourself to someone, you never really do all the way, so why lie? The fact that I sometimes get lonely infuriates me. I hate loneliness because I see it as a weakness in my armor. When I'm strong, they will not be able to hurt me. When I let my guard down, they will try to hurt me, kill me. When someone tries to be nice to me, it makes me mad, mad to the point where I say things to get them to never come near me again. When a woman shows me kindness the only thing I can think of doing is humiliating her before she does it to me. I am mean to her for all the ones who have caused me pain and confused me in the past. It is the coward in me standing up demanding to be recognized. I immerse myself in pain so I will always be ready to deal with the pain that will ultimately be brought upon me. I know they will, especially women. [...] I don't think they mean to, it's just the way they are. [...] I hear all those blues songs about 'where has she gone?' and all I can say is, who gives a fuck where she went, where she is or what she's doing. She can go anyplace she wants. I don't care. I don't care if I never see her again. I never even knew she left. Kill the dead man. Go ahead, try. Try to kill me. Put the dead man in pain, go ahead, you can't put me in more pain than I'm in already. Only in pain do I feel normal. It's when the pain relents that I become alarmed. That's when they might try to test me, and I always have to be ready to be tested. You never know what the little shit heads will throw your way next. Outside of the room you take your chances with whatever they want to do to you. You can be victimized by a weak piece of shit too easily. You have to be ready for whatever they want to bring your way. You have no control. Laws protect them from getting what they need. They can talk to you or try to touch you and you have to be able to deal with it. Some guy was talking shit to me last night, and I wanted to punch him in the face as hard as I could. I didn't do anything. You can't do anything to them. They just use it against you. They can take their weakness and shove it into your guts and make you look like a fool. And all of a sudden you're doing time in their jails and doing everything they tell you to. They win. When you play the game, they always win. I always feel like I'm getting fucked whenever I leave this room. When I go out there with them I get raped and there's nothing I can do about it. I am held captive by my own strength. Held down by my own rage. All the people that made a difference in my life have either died or left me. So the rest of them I don't care about. I don't play that game anymore. I did before and I see where it got me. The truth is the truth, they're all the same, feel the same and respond the same way to the same things over and over. How can I care about one of them and not care about all of them. How can I not care about any of them and yet care about one or two? On this endless night, I am thinking about this woman. She made the mistake of trying to get close to me. I let her get there because I figured she must be doing some kind of research project like that lady from the University who did the report on me. When I found out that she actually felt something for me, I was immediately filled with contempt for her. I told her not to depend on me for anything, not for any kind of commitment, comfort, anything. I told her I am just a stupid animal and will only cause disappointment. Finally I could no longer speak. I felt so dead inside that all I could do was hang up and make the room even darker. I came to the conclusion that I don't care about friendship. I don't care about most of the things I used to. I don't even care much about living. I'm just here until I die. I'll just sit in this dark room and wait for death to take me. He's busy right now but knows right where I am. I've been running for years but I'm tired now. Tired of all the bullshit. Mine and everyone else's. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how I ended up like I did. How much of me is me and how much of me is an imitation of my father and mother? I see the characteristics. When I used to talk to women I could feel my father rising in me. [...] Losers know things that winners don't know, will never know. All this running place to place, just to end up and then taking off for the next place. I see what a load of lies it can be. You can move fast and keep the lies at bay for a while but they catch up with you and then you're done. I feel good in the dark. I like the lights off so I can see if anyone's coming. I don't like people being able to see me going past a window in this place. I don't want to give them an edge. I have worked a long time not to give ay of them the slightest advantage. I close my eyes in the darkness. In the silence I can imagine some kind of relief. Usually some scene in the desert. Sitting in the middle of a black nowhere trying to think of nothing. Trying to get a few breaths in before the horror comes back and my eyes grow wide and vacant, filled with the Abyss. I would hear a shift in the sane, look around and a woman would be there. Someone to tell a secret to. Someone who would be a friend to me. I would talk; she would talk. [...] I open my eyes again and I'm on the floor in the dark. I feel safe in the dark because if someone breaks in here I wont be such an easy target. In darkness I can forget myself. It's the only way I stand a chance. You look at some and you know they're marked. I spend a lot of time living in shadows. I am hoping that they will rub off on me and I'll become a shadow myself. It would be great if parts of me would go away and never return. I am one that goes through the motions. I have not felt whole for ages. I got my heart broken. My spirit got shattered and mutilated. I will not be coming back from this. I don't want to. I am so far up the river now that there is no coming back. It is possible to know too much. Experience leaves scars. It has proven my undoing. You can still function as a living ruin. It's easy to hide it. But those who know can spot it on you in a second. They're broken as well so they just look on and move past you, another shuffling ghost. The last thing they want to do is know what you went through because it only reminds them of the living hell of their own lives. They are happy to leave you alone...."