Crybaby

I've been depressed lately. Yeah, yeah, I know boo fucking hoo, like I really have anything to be crying about. It's never really triggered by anything really, it'll just come, this beast rearing it's ugly head. The thing that prevails is this deep, trying emptiness. I'll smile, make chit chat with friends, pretend that everything is right and chipper. 

Its happened throughout my life, I've tried things from meditation, herbal remedies, to exercise, just not as far as popping pills, at least not ones actually prescribed to me. I suppose the vices don't really help things at all, just compound to the problem. It's like being stuck in the bottom of a muddy hole, and every time I try to claw out of it, I'll just be covered in more shit. And then usually after a few weeks or months, one day it'll be gone and the world will be beautiful again and I won't have to fake the smiles. 

There have been also been moments of extreme elation: getting into my top choice college, truly loving a girl for the first time, traveling. I try to rationalize everything, why I feel down and gloomy, but I just push past it, try to keep myself busy, drown it out, drink it down, and hopefully it'll pass like it always has. I suppose that certain events wouldn't be as beautiful and poignant without these pitiful lows. Food tastes bland, the work I'm producing just never comes out right, and sometimes I really just want to get into the car and just run away from everything.

The last couple of months have been a blur. Life revolves around school, work, and the studio. I spend the weekends drunk out of my mind, sometimes on the weekdays as well and I really have to cut that bullshit out. Work is no longer enjoyable but something I've been trudging through. I've been thinking about going to a shrink, but somehow I feel like that would just be admitting defeat.

I saw this girl this past weekend who I used to date in college. Let's call her Suzy. I treated her like shit. One instance in particular stands out. She was visiting me for the weekend and staying at my place. She did this on several occasions and we would go out to parties and she would be fun and social. My friends adored her, she was beautiful, and she came just to see me. We had been dating for a few months and she was the sweetest thing. She would write me cards and send them to me in the mail if we hadn't seen each other for a couple of weeks. We were at a dinner party and one of my friends asked me if we were seeing each other and I remember saying we were just friends. I watched her heart drop. A few weeks after that I told her I didn't want to see her anymore specifically citing the "it's not you, it's me" line like a douche.

I am surprised that she would even talk to me anymore and I suppose it's things like this that have wreaked havoc on my own karma. There are a lot of things that I wish I could take back. All my ruined relationships and my need to sabotage and destroy anything pure and good. People always say that you can't really ever love anyone until you love yourself. If this were true, I don't really know how things will ever work out.

I told Suzy that I was sorry for the way I treated her and that she was the one girl I wish I hadn't broken things off with. She smiled at me, but her eyes were sad. She told me that I had broken her heart and I knew it, because I had watched it happen. She told me to just let it go, that it had happened and it's how things just are. Sometimes things are just better left unsaid. 

It's 5 in the morning and I haven't been able to sleep. I have to be in class at 9 on a saturday morning. For the last few hours I've just been laying in bed with my eyes closed and a thousand ugly things running through my mind. And when I think of Suzy and her soft heart and delicate sweet smile, all I think about is how very sad her eyes looked and I feel like a complete and utter bastard.

I don't know where I'm going with all of this, I just know that I deserve a lot of it. Being a lifetime asshole doesn't really get you much credit on the cosmic scale. I want to say sorry to the girl I use to make fun of in elementary school, I want to tell my ex girlfriend that I wish I wasn't such a dick to her, I want to mend all the things I've kicked and broken along the way, but these things are much easier to be said than actually done.

puddle wonderful

I try to wake up early every morning. Not early, early, but at least before 9 which I suppose isn't exactly seizing the day, but it works out for the most part. I spend the first hour trying to shake off the remnants of dreams in front of the computer while brushing my teeth is usually hit or miss. Then I take Emma out for a walk.  It's usually the same route for at least a few weeks before I get immensely bored and have to switch it up. But in all honesty, taking a walk through the suburbs everyday isn't exactly the essence of exploration. 

I'm usually pretty good about it except when I'm recuperating from the occasional bender. It's been raining intermittently recently. Every time it rains, the pavement on the trail I walk through will be replete with worms.  Wriggling and trying to find solace back in the soft earth, but only to be fucked on the pavement.  Once in awhile I'll bend down to throw a couple into the grass, but trying to save every one would be impossible so I just try not to step on any of them. 

When I was a kid I loved the rain. I would ride my bike through it and jump into puddles and barrel through the mud ladened fields. Tracking a wonderful mess everywhere and giving my mom the cumbersome burden of cleaning everything. I miss childhood and the simple pleasures which came with unbridled freedom and innocence. And growing up, you learn the harsh truths and realities of life. The dark underbelly of life which you were sheltered from. That evil exists in the world. No more running around naked, no more eating five bowls of cereal while parked in front of the T.V. watching Ninja Turtles, no more jumping into huge puddles without looking somewhat crazy and imbalanced, no more days of truly unplanned and unbridled unrestraint upon life. Rules and regulations, schedules and deadlines, life as I know it.

Once the rain thins and the sun comes out for the next couple of days the worms which have not safely found their way back home are baked red-black in the sun, like crispy bacon bits. And I guess it really bothered me for a bit, that there were hundreds, if not thousands of these corpses just crunching underneath my every footstep. I wonder if this would have bothered me if I were a child or merely I just think too much about such a trivial thing.

I wonder if it is possible to ever return to return to a state of innocent perception. To not think through knowledge and learning. I want to be a kid again and just not care about anything.

in Just-

spring        when the world is mud-

luscious the little 

lame balloonman

whistles          far        and wee

and eddiandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer 

old balloonman whistles

far         and       wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's 

spring

and

       the

   goat-footed

balloonMan           whistles

far 

and 

wee

-e.e cummings

If you are not familiar with any other works by cummings, I highly recommend him albeit I am not the biggest fan of poetry nor have very extensive knowledge on the subject.