A Nightmare of a Dream

It happens every day without fail.  I spend all day in torturous rehab, trying to cut you out of my life.  I cling to the idea of our love like an addict looking for a a last fix, just to make the world feel inhabitable once again.  Your pictures on my phone, they must go.  Our mutual friends are lost in the whirlwind of our fallout.  What's left?  Just me and my loneliness, trying to self heal.  It happens every night without fail.  I long for the sanity I once knew. It's nighttime when you finally start to fall into the shadows of my past, I slip out of my thoughts and into slumber, into a nightmare of a dream.  There you are, beautiful, and happy, as if nothing went wrong.  Living as if our love never faded away into thin air.  My dreams are not lucid, I did not put you here.  At this moment, love has consumed me, everything is perfect. It happens every morning without fail.  I wake up and reality strikes as if I have fallen into the frigid waters of a cold river.  I check my phone, nothing.  Only the pictures I haven't deleted, the number still on speed dial, and that awful feeling that I am no closer than I was yesterday.  Am I supposed to let you go?

Through the Castle Walls

I am an open book, an easy read at that.  My feelings are as clear as the smile your faking.  Asking what's wrong is pointless, because your emotions are behind layers of concrete in a castle you've built far away from it all.  When I tried to talk about us, you hid, avoided, denied, and reinforced your walls even thicker. You never let me in, so I shouldn't have been surprised when you locked me out for good.

Stolen Hope

A mind war torn  from playing Russian Roulette with 6 bullets day in day out. Regret, Guilt, Apathy, Loneliness, Nostalgia and Fear all loaded in the chamber. The trajectory of each bullet an attempt at an artistic arrangement to show what lies beneath...looking for lost hope even though I'm the thief.

Illusions

Was it her, or the idea of her?  It was proposed to me that I fell in love with who I wanted her to be, but not who she was.  Was I blinded by the hope that this was my end all in love, just because she had a few qualities of what I was looking for?  Illusions of perfection, shattered when reality hit.  Now I don't know what's harder, the fact that its over, or the fact that it never was. - NR

Been a Minute

It's pretty disheartening to look back a lengthy amount of time and realize how much one has truly not changed. I'm sure the same can be said for just about anyone, but for me what it means is all the issues that everyone tells you are going to get better and you just have to have patience for, have not resolved themselves one bit. What all of this means is that in my mind the bulwarks and ramparts have just garnered that much more strength, that the logic that is entrenched within my brain is just that much deeper. Not to question whether it is objectively "right" or "wrong", because I have come to the conclusion long ago that it is undeniably "wrong". I just happen to have that logic, from whatever combination of genetics, life experiences, coincidences, brain chemicals, etc. have left me with. Having been through so many conventional and alternative types of therapy ranging from biofeedback and meditating to control breathing, to spending 3 intensive wilderness therapy months in the woods of Vermont and many places in between...I just have less and less reasoning to fall back to figure that I'm ever going to be able to really get some enjoyment out of life. Granted, the life circumstances part hasn't left me with a lot of area to work with.

This is not to rant about those though, albeit they certainly play a role. It's just the notion that I know I'm smart, I know I'm nice and a morally sound individual for the most part. On the outside I imagine I've looked like someone who has it all together and has a lot of confidence behind the words that pour forth. Tricky tricky. Alas, I do certainly have conviction in my ideas and such, but they just don't do anything for me. The theories surrounding life and the dynamics of relationships and human beings in general are really interesting, but just like everything else, they do not speak to some deeper part of me where my spark would be kept. I'm not sure if it's ever been lit to tell you the truth. I was always good at sports but never really excelled to where I probably could've been because that passion wasn't there. Academics can be cool sure...but I just sort of go through the motions and what happens happens. Maybe I just have some misconception of what a spark is supposed to feel like. Perhaps I have some over-amplified notion of some feeling of grandeur inside that I'm waiting to feel, when really I've already had it and that's all it is. If that's true though, then that's really pathetic, so I really don't feel like I could be feeling the same sort of spark that drives people to do great things and be so passionate about it. Yet there does remain a last frontier that, naturally, defies this.

Love has been a tricky thing. Cliche I know, but all the same, it's claim to being a notorious phrase comes from truth I believe. Throughout my years I've fallen in love with the girl who was my best friend at a young age, and we were together for quite some time with rough patches in between, and it ended when things fell apart for me. Then I go and meet another girl at the age of 17 on the cusp of 18 and fall so hard for her it was scary. Needless to say that fell apart as well, with the ending of that chapter coming with me realizing how I just didn't have the capacity for something like that, on top of other trifles, it just wasn't fair to anyone. Regardless, the point here is how love certainly broke through and created some sort of spark for sure. However it would always periodically get snuffed out by depression or anxiety or something, which is natural I suppose I'm not saying I have some standard for those feelings that they should truly conquer all every moment of every day. When it got to the point where I felt as though I couldn't be a good boyfriend though and be as passionate about a relationship as they deserved, then it would get tricky. In my first relationship I would just end it in those times and just think I had fallen out of love or something along those lines. When I got older and entered into a more mature relationship, it would usually end in me doing something stupid like telling lies to try to seem like a super-boyfriend or stealing poetry from the internet to try to seem magical with the pen. I would jump at the opportunity (true opportunity) for a relationship at this point, although I feel like it would be unfair to the girl who ended up with me and that it may become a crutch. Granted, it's unfair to start myself out from behind before I really see what it would be like, as every relationship is certainly different in a myriad of ways, but either way I think what I'm saying is grounded in some truth. The fact that I'm downstairs in my dormitory talking about how love is the only real thing in my life certainly implies that there might be some unfair balance going on if anything were to crop up. Conclusion I come to with all of this, is that I would certainly try again...but I'm certainly skeptical of my ability to be a consistent person capable of expressing love and being worth it.

Then to go with this wave of thinking, is life really worth it if all you're living for is the prospect of love? People experiencing love would say yes, those who are without would probably say no. The concept of prospective things in life being the driving force is what gets me. I feel like everything that people tell me to hold on to is some promise of a later event which has no guarantee what-so-ever. While what they are saying may be correct in that since I really have nothing now, technically everything would be something prospective...I see that more as reasoning to just let go and see the futility in it all, and they say no it'll come for you I know it (what do you expect them to say). I recognize the difficult position I put people in (friends, family, therapists etc.) when I talk like that, as they have to come up with something to say that keeps you in and doesn't further push you towards some sort of totally apathetic way of thinking. Here is my qualm with all of this, I feel like all of this stuff that may come at a later date isn't any real answer. The problem is some fundamental flaw inside of me, some firewall in my soul that keeps happiness and out. I feel like external things could fall into place and I'd still feel out of place and out of sync with the universe. I had it alright before, I had a relationship before, I've had a good assessment of my own character in a positive light before, I'm not rich but I'm certainly not poor. Point being, that it just seems to be whatever is inside me is the problem. Depression is the worst kind of cancer (don't quote me on that), because there's no chemo for it, there's no hope of them going in with a scalpel and being able to cut out the tumor that lives in every fiber of you. I feel just so apathetic towards everything, except maybe just helping other people lead a better and happier life themselves, but alas that cannot be all you have. I tangle with the thought that if I were not here then maybe someone would be in my place and use the resources in life that are wasted on me to some better cosmic use. However, I end up being pretty apathetic about that as well, and don't really care much to think about it.

Tomorrow (technically), I'll go and see a philosophy professor for philosophical counseling, and then I'll go see my counselor a few hours later. Honestly, I don't know what to expect, I'm hoping they start to feel the gravity of where I'm at, because it's starting to scare me.