I use "cocaine"
I am struggling to explain myself clearly. Gosh! I always forget EVERYTHING I was planning on writing down, as I was driving home from school. I wish my brain had the ability to write for me, perhaps someday we can all wire our heads to computers so that our thoughts can be recorded, so we don’t misplace anything. So we don’t forget that part of ourselves that we just found and write it down quickly before it vanishes again. Maybe I was thinking about the way iced coffee makes me feel. I once heard that tribes in Africa drug themselves so that they can have a “spiritual encounter” and receive some sort of enlightened new sense. As crazy as it sounds, iced coffee is my drug. It slides through the pink straw into my mouth and then my veins are buzzing with its voice. My brain is powered by its force and I suddenly see the world differently. It’s like I gain a greater capacity for thought and my mind is constantly churning and turning over random thoughts in my head - profound thoughts that I am otherwise incapable of fathoming. Whether it is a spiritual experience or simply the effect of my brain cells firing more rapidly, I will leave that to the scientists, because for now, I like the idea that I suddenly have a heightened sense of my surroundings and a super power of processing complicated concepts. It’s probably an illusion, like when people on speed think that the reason why people are staring is because their dancing is outrageous. It is, just not in a good way. So, yes, I use caffeine. But, hey, at least it’s not crack.
Maybe this is my problem. I almost stopped at the first line, afraid that whatever else I wrote would be so senseless that I would look back on it and cringe - like I do when embarrassing moments tap me on the shoulder and I am wishing that I had the ability to simply erase them from history. Maybe I will look back later and call these words tasteless, but at least right now I am reaping the fruits of being alive with my words, using them in the best way that I know how to at this moment. It’s definitely a lot better than I felt just a few moments ago, when I was in the car, trying to turn up the radio loud enough to interrupt my nostalgic thoughts (and other kinds, but I don‘t even want to try to express the way THAT feels. Simply put, it sucks a lot.) “No fire of hell or scheme of man could ever pluck me from his hands.” I let it echo through the chambers of myself. The walls have barely any paintings on them because every time I sit to paint, I stop at the first line, thinking way too hard and fearing too much that my words will come back to tease me. “That was so stupid, what makes you think you have anything worth writing down, anything worthy of sharing?” The voice in my ear is saying. “You don’t even know how to express yourself clearly most of the time.” So I reach my pinky back up to the backspace, click away my stupid, juvenile, unappealing first line, and exit back out of the word processor because I don’t believe that I’m really able to process any words right. In fact, those are always my first words: I am struggling to explain myself clearly.
Maybe this is my problem. I almost stopped at the first line, afraid that whatever else I wrote would be so senseless that I would look back on it and cringe - like I do when embarrassing moments tap me on the shoulder and I am wishing that I had the ability to simply erase them from history. Maybe I will look back later and call these words tasteless, but at least right now I am reaping the fruits of being alive with my words, using them in the best way that I know how to at this moment. It’s definitely a lot better than I felt just a few moments ago, when I was in the car, trying to turn up the radio loud enough to interrupt my nostalgic thoughts (and other kinds, but I don‘t even want to try to express the way THAT feels. Simply put, it sucks a lot.) “No fire of hell or scheme of man could ever pluck me from his hands.” I let it echo through the chambers of myself. The walls have barely any paintings on them because every time I sit to paint, I stop at the first line, thinking way too hard and fearing too much that my words will come back to tease me. “That was so stupid, what makes you think you have anything worth writing down, anything worthy of sharing?” The voice in my ear is saying. “You don’t even know how to express yourself clearly most of the time.” So I reach my pinky back up to the backspace, click away my stupid, juvenile, unappealing first line, and exit back out of the word processor because I don’t believe that I’m really able to process any words right. In fact, those are always my first words: I am struggling to explain myself clearly.