Where Smith Puts his Truth at Night

I'm confused with life these days. All I have is the work I do to pay my bills, my bed, and my music. And that's what my life is. I don't trust very much, as I can't seem to find anything worth trusting lately. I stagnate at home and I want to improve myself. It's just that I can't get myself to start.

To finally hang up those paintings that sit in my room leaning on upturned drawers. Just clean everything out. Agh. This post doesn't even make sense.

It's cold tonight, friends.

I need your warmth around me. Moments like these I feel so alone and so frigid I feel as though I'll shatter at the slightest touch. Shards and slivers will be all that remain. And even these will melt when it becomes tolerable to live, breathe again.

I see your faces. I see them smile and I see them twist in pain. We've all been through it. Through the grinder we called our lives. No one makes it out of life alive is the saying, right? Some of us die sooner than any of us could anticipate. Or maybe you survived longer than you thought you would.

All I know is that there's a hole in my life where many of you fell into. I miss your presence. I miss that piece. It pains me to think sometimes that I envy you. Such is the gift of my life.

I walk a strange path. I walk it alone, at night, in the cold, with a minimum of clothing. So I can feel the slightest warmth whenever it comes.

I look for your ghosts. Please show me something good in myself.

I miss you all.

I'm in a real dark place lately. There's so much for me to do. There's so much I can do. And I just find myself bandying around in bouts of self-loathing and desiring nothing so much as a long hibernation period...Or maybe some kind of chrysalis stage, cocooning myself into a deep sleep. All in the hopes of being something better when I wake.

Isn't that amazingly lazy of me?

What good is it to be given the power to do whatever your whims dictate, but lack the will to wield that power. To be given the ability to rip mountains asunder, but want not to even bash two pebbles together.  To be gifted, but not spirited.  There''s something intensely sad about that.

Such a waste, they'll say.

I frequently wish I could put everything around me in pause; just so that I could sit down on the ground and take a few good breaths.

It's only 2:00 AM here. It's a Friday night. So that's still pretty early for someone like me.

But I did my best to avoid everything today. I think I succeeded. I wasted this whole day.

I don't know...

Time to open up iTunes and start up my Sleep playlist.

The sounds of my apartment as I sit here in the living room...

Snoring from the large mass, somewhat resembling one roommate, to my left, as well as the accompaniment of the fan as it shudders around each revolution, sounding not too unlike (obscenely enough) fucking someone into a wall, a softer snoring and even softer breathing in sync with that snoring to my right. The soft snoring belongs to my roommate's girlfriend, whereas the soft breathing belongs to her friend laying next to her in bed. Hmmm...my last roommate lies within his room too far away for my ears to pick up his sounds. I'm the only one still awake.

It's the pretense of working on one of my cadastral assignments that leaves me here sitting alone on the couch pretending to do schoolwork.

The remnants of last night as well as the evidence of why everyone is sleeping so 'well' tonight are placed in front of me. Numerous beer bottles, shot glasses, and plastic cups litter my coffee table. It's quite the spread for three drinkers.

It didn't end well for one of our party, as I helped take care of her as she held on to my toilet's rim for dear life. My roommate's girlfriend kept apologizing for her, but it didn't really matter to me too much. I've never been squeamish. Cradling her limp form to ensure her head stayed outside of the toilet bowl was my job now. It was my mission. I was almost thankful I had someone to take care of. I wasn't embarrassed. She kept trying to fix her hair. It was almost amusing if it wasn't negated by her look of horror when the press of bile forced her to gag.

It wasn't the most glorious light to see a pretty girl in. Especially when that girl was supposed to be my match, as measured by my roommate's girlfriend. We stayed there for an hour...even longer making sure she expelled the noxious stuff we intake to have fun. Afterwards, I told her not to tell her friend I was even there. To tell her I had been in the living room the whole time continuing to play that drinking game we'd begun hours earlier. Instead of holding her head up so she wouldn't fall face-first into the white porcelain of my toilet bowl. I figured she wouldn't remember much anyway and that this would save her the embarrassment.

I carried her to my roommate's bed and his girlfriend slept with her to make sure nothing went bump in the night. I unpacked the air mattress and filled it up in the empty dining room. Soon everyone fell asleep and I was left alone again.

I've walked around the apartment countless times now. Watching over my charges. Everyone was pretty drunk when we stopped playing. I made sure everybody was still breathing. Making sure the girl was still on her side. No one would hurt these people I know. They were under my watch. That's the little game I played.

The side effect of this was that I watched everyone sleep. Everyone looked so...peaceful. I don't know what that's like anymore. The only other watchers in my apartment were the pair of chinchillas in their cage in the dining room. Nocturnal as I am. They watched my roommate snore his way through the night. It was cute watching them watch my roommate.

My roommates have others. Others that share: their bodies, most of their thoughts, in one case their whole heart, in the other a good portion of it, money, living quarters, etc.

It's both wonderful and horrible to have such arrangements where I lay my head at night. On one hand...they bring me a measure of happiness that can only be fufilled by watching others be happy. On the other...they provide a bleak foil for me to reflect off. I can't imagine being them.

I've come to be somewhat friends with their others'. So much so, that they've become individuals in my thoughts rather than just the chaff I brush past every day. That has its own blacks and whites for me to sift through in my own good time.

Eating dinner with one couple moments ago...

"...not stinky pits [said in a cute, not gross manner, referring to his scent.] But I just like something about it. When you leave in the morning I put my head in your pillow looking for it. I don't know, maybe I'm just weird."
...
He continues chewing his food. She looks at him imploringly for something. An affirmation, perhaps. He might be thinking about it or he might be wondering how Dallas caught up so quickly in the third quarter. I watch both impassively. The moment for a timely response has passed.

I intercede. "It's called love." Something about the manner in which I said it caused them both to pause and look at me with new eyes. Her innocent confusion contrasted so gratingly with his obliviousness to her slight act of unabashed love. It made me angry.

Lots of things do that nowadays.

     I'm needing a lot of things right now. It's so hard to work through everything in the time I have racing away. Ever feel like the cusp of your entire being, your entire future, is hinged on how you handle the next few days, next few hours, next few minutes. It's anxiety I feel riding me right now. I am strained, but I don't know the breaking point of my self. I don't know what my failure tolerance is. I won't know until it's too late. These rails I ride at these speeds I travel in the blackness of my nights...

    I need absolution. I need to know if dropping this semester is okay. I need to know I'm not some incredible waste of potential. I need that reassurance that this isn't what I'll always be. I need to feel like my life won't end if I opt to take only two courses next Spring, or even take off from school. I need to know I won't always lie in bed alone, wondering if I can ever be a good person.

    I'm more scared now than I've ever been. But there's no monsters out there waiting for me anymore. No monsters to kill. No physical, tangible manifestions of opposition for me to fight. There's just me.

    I'm the scariest thing in my world, in my friends' worlds, and they don't even know it. They'll never know.

    I need to know I'll be okay.

So I've noticed the past three nights in a row I've somehow managed to put my boxers on backwards without realizing until much too late.

This came to a head, literally, the other night. I was standing at a urinal in this bar's rather clean handicapped bathroom when I was about to do my business and this girl walks in, because apparently the lock doesn't work on the door. She immediately startles at the sight of me.

I turn around and tell her it's okay, because my boxers are on backwards. I think she either didn't understand me or that the thought of a man wearing his boxers backwards was a frightening prospect, because she took on a fearful aspect and ran out of the bathroom...

Anyways...at this point of the night I'm not really caring and the next time I had to use the bathroom I'd forgotten already. So when I zipped down and I couldn't find the pocket to slip myself through I had to contort myself in a what must have been a humorous fashion while at the urinal stall. Drunken, rowdy onlookers onlooked as I did a dance at the stall trying to get myself right while I took a leak.

I think I did it in a dignified manner though.

The moral of this tragic faux pas fable is that I need to start sleeping more. And maybe I shouldn't wake myself up after two hours of sleep so that I could pretend to do school work. Maybe I should take a day off from my life and just sleep.

Maybe...

So I think I need to see a pyschiatrist. I think I have a mental problem. After speaking with my sister, the doc, at length on the issue, and reading thousands upon thousands of words on the issue...I'm afraid that I'm not capable of concentrating on my studies anymore. The countless hours I've burned in the computer lab in the morning, day, and night accomplishing closer to nothing than little. All of it meaning so very little academic success.

I don't know what else to do.

I stand here at a cross-roads in my life. I'm 21. I go to school at the best university in the State. I have a decent job. I've paid off my car and I'm treading water. I know there are a billion people, at least, out there that would be envious at the problems I have. And if I were a stronger man, the thought of that should have shamed me into making the best of my present circumstances...but I'm not.

It's been a downward spiral for a long time now, academically. And its slope drags the rest of my life into the hole I persevere digging into.

I'm afraid I have a serious problem.

The man stares blankly at the floor. His inventory of tools lays out arrayed in no particular order, gleaming.

He lifts his tired eyes up. Still nothing comes to him.

He is an artisan. He is a Painter. He is a Writer. He is a Collater. He is a Killer. He is a Baby Sitter.

All the skills, all the acoutrements of his work, all the talents, all of it lies in front of his kneeling form.

But nothing speaks to him. There is no bugle sounding him to reville. There's no spark igniting the fuel inside his cylinders. No bat signal. No call to duty. All there is, is nothingness. There's no need for his particular 'talents.'

So he sits in the dark. And waits. Tired of existing, he can only wait for the call.

But he cannot sketch the humanity that lies right outside his windows with his solitary piece of charcoal. He cannot destroy the walls of the derelict structure wrapped around him with his sledge hammer. He could not even lift his hand to write a goodbye letter for his friends.

There is nothing there.

And he doesn't know how to change the shape of what he sees. He doesn't know what will give him life. He's capable of so much and he sits by with his face to the floor. No catalyst introduces itself to the man.

Not used. Not needed. Not wanted.

The tools go to waste. The artisan goes to waste.