weightless place

self -

undefined by extraneous choices;

made by an impulse

to be loved,

no matter how conditionally.

No matter

how incongruous what loves me is

to what i love, think i love,

.. think needs me to love.

self

- bled complacently

after all this

(by what is opposed to loving me back).

loving like this

the way i see it .. no, the way i have been conditioned to see it by my own experience .. is that there are two ways to start a relationship and two ways to end them.

there are those who get too close, platonically, and the relationship has no other way than to gain depth besides physically (and the emotional avenues the physicality opens up). people always think this evolution is ideal .. ideal until these things develop long distance, with another person involved, or after you find out your not attracted to each other .. insert awkward ending here. things fade, you stop talking (accept for the occasional what if), and your done and regretting never knowing/or knowing too much.

what if this new depth is inhibited by another person? what if you are ready to take that step and are unable to, you lose your chance you can't go back and silence creeps in to fill the space of the lost moment. then it's gone .. love, or the potential for it, has expired. it doesn't come back.

the other type of people are those who automatically present themselves with the potential for attraction, you move too quick, you play too many games, they are intimidated, you are distracted, things happen once, maybe for a few weeks and then they dissipate because .. well because why?

because people are afraid they won't fit into your life? because they have a girlfriend? because they can't take responsibility for their emotions? because why?

and maybe love is like this too .. unanswered questions, missed chances, singular encounters .. maybe anticipation is all love feeds on. . and when that anticipation reaches its climax we are disappointed by its actualization.

maybe the only way to seal love is by the ritualization of this anticipation? and is the only way to ritualize both these types of "love" by running to and from the same familiar stranger?

it cant be ..

like this also

there are some people that make you want to stay, and others, invariably, that make you want to leave.

staying because there is potential for friendship, something untapped that would benefit everyone. but staying because it's easy and this is a redeeming quality of a place that otherwise smothers is not .. beneficial.

stifled by not

defining your absence

ironically, many of the people that make you want to leave are the ones you can never fully detach yourself from. But is leaving bc there is potential in multiple places .. where happiness is a possibility and comfort/simplicity is a guarantee ..is not detaching yourself from a claustrophobic obligation simply rerouting it to another catalyst?

really what i am saying is that unless you go somewhere for yourself, and only yourself, you will eventually, inevitably become unhappy. (clearly.)

is the only way to find self-happiness to abandon people you love? and in this abandonment do we find that love is worth it only if you have come back to it more happy, un-stifled, than when you left it?

walking away from people because the happiness they provide is perishable is love also.

love is preserving the perishable so that the finite qualities of people cement themselves in us.

do we free ourselves by preserving the finite from a distance?

and is this love also?

love is like this

i'm sorry no one told you

- i didn't tell you

or that you knew that no one told you

but you knew what wasn't being told anyway

i'm sorry you had to know before i had known you knew

that life is volcanic; catastrophic in its potential to disappoint

no one is sorry that i'm disappointed

-constantly

no one knows that i know they are disappointing me

bc they think they are better .. no one knows i know,

we know,

that they are liars

they lie, bc we know that life is

volcanic

bc we want but cant have

things not be the same

i'm sorry things can't not be the same

or i wish i was

catastrophic in a sense

because lacking sameness

makes dissimilarity disappointing

-like everything else

like life

when you're lied to

in a way that averts the truth without speaking

i'm sorry i'm not sorry about your sameness

sameness, when it is a rooted, like a dying tree to the ground

self made, like a tomb

i'm sorry no one told you

-i didn't tell you

i will not be a part of your infuriating sameness

i will be volcanic and catastrophic on my own.

the middle torn out

until recently i had no idea, but i am seeing that grief is at times stagnant, and always fragile; selfish in its fragility almost, like a little kid clinging to the leg of a parent (a memory) for fear that when it is no longer tangible it is gone .. indefinitely.

and then there is the silence. its not silence though, it is an absence of sounds, daily sounds, those of living (existing) that become deafening in their enormity. like a vacuum, amplifying the singular sounds of existence so that their echo is a constant reminder of this absence.

i try to take up space, absorb the echo so it is not quite so suffocating - does this last forever? in varying degrees?

can a heart break forever? a painful disintegration that you cope with but never resolve?

ive never understood loss before now ..

and i don't know if we're not better off not knowing.

someone else's forward motion

"intentions appear to be the most fragile things in the world."

- Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician.

Daniel.wallace

happy birthday

moving too fast

(not buckled in)

breaking

inhibited: a free falling of something felt

never uttered

for fear language will give way

- fail to encompass -

what seeing and feeling has become

inside a mind so sure

of things unchanging

like roses

and coffee

strong and silent

rich in legacy,

in hearts now breaking.

hoping: for relief, for beginning again

safe and waiting

in florida sun.

afraid to merge

"I keep feeling that people are becoming less human and more animalistic. They seem to think less and feel less so that everyone is operating on a very primitive level. I wonder what you and I will see in our lifetimes. It seems so hopeless yet we must keep on trying ... I guess we can't escape being a product of the times, can we?"

— Bret Easton Ellis (The Informers)

completeness: habitually lacking

if meaning is dependent on regularity and you make a habit out of communicating in ambiguous terms does the meaning your relationships become subsequently ambiguous? if you standardize superficial relationships, make the lines indistinguishable, and therefore obscure any potential for purpose or significance, will you somehow damage your ability to assign any amount of legitimacy to your interactions?

have we standardized superficiality of language by playing games and objectifying peoples wants (needs)? or have we always had that potential and we are now at the point in our society where social expectations and the abuse of this power have aligned to create the ability to segregate ourselves from all emotional responsibility?

by regularizing emotional competence we are isolating ourselves from meaning .. does that make sense? because if we hide within the intricacies of ambiguity can we ever really know what we are saying? I mean really know how we are being perceived? or are we walking around as perpetual strangers? estranged as a function of self-awareness?

i might be jumping to too many conclusions. or i might be psychoanalyzing. . you decide.

where the eye looks hardest

i've come to the conclusion that people (most specifically parents, college roommates, co-workers) take their perceptions of you-take the little box they put you in based on their expectations- and interpret all of your actions to fit within their stereotype. 

what happens when you realize what people expect you to be, see the box they have placed you in, and garner your interactions to fit into that box because it is easier than disappointing them and re-defining their view of you when they don't want to see it.

I used to think i could censor parts of myself to make other people happy, in fact i got quiet good at it. the result; there are exactly 4 people who know who i really am, and everyone else ignores the parts of me i never forced them to accept. 

so now the people that surround me at school and work and home don't really know anything about me and i am starting to resent the fact that their expectations were so much more powerful than my will to define myself opposingly in their minds. 

and maybe i wouldn't have this problem if i couldn't see through people so well, or maybe i would be more angry if i couldn't. all i know is that i need to be around people who can see every part of me, and being home makes me miss the people that really know me. 

and as a result i still don't know where my life is going because i so desperately need to cling to and simultaneously destroy this "plan" i have concocted to make all parties happy and account for any disparities in expectation.  

 

life X weight of the world^2

I've learned that people will only encourage you until things become too real. Because when things become too real they become unrealistic, there a flaws and glitches, and dead ends no one thinks about when you are setting goals. There is no potential to be disappointed when you have the implicit support and encouragement of those too blind to think they are protecting you from it. 

I think it is exceptionally worse to be protected from disappointment than it is to have a rational, realistic view of what is going on in your own life. Having this happen to me twice now i have come to realize that the only thing these people who claim to "support" me are doing is trying to "protect" me from my supposedly unrealistic aspirations. 

Ironically, people seem to try harder the more they are encouraged and are even more devastated when their so called supporters turn their backs at the last minuet and try to pull "i told you so" out of their ass. 

(because no one ever had the balls to tell you so in the first place) 

i can see this happening once - its a fluke a dream built in possibility and wrecked in unfavorable circumstance. But twice? and this time the only back up plan being the original, previously wrecked dream?

something is wrong and it can't be all my fault. because i know that there has to be something i want that i am good enough for. 

no one else has to settle to be good enough, so why should i? 

or do they? is that the devastation of growing up? is it that everyone, at some point, realizes they are never going to be good enough for what they want? 

where do you go from there? 

fearful symmetry

"He got it now, of course, finally . . . He would never have known the horror of getting what he thought he wanted. He could have spared himself and everybody else the cost of it . . . If there was a moral to the story of Martin Chatwin, that was it in a nutshell. Sure, you can live out your dreams, but it'll only turn you into a monster. Better stay home and do card tricks in your bedroom instead."

lev grossman 

The Magicians

  

of which they contain the most

from now on i am going to trust that some people are capable of taking responsibility for their emotions, and equally capable of communicating the emotions they are willing to take responsibility for. 

this is not to say that i am turning a blind eye on the way people make themselves feel, or the things they do because they are afraid (etc). but with this, right now, i am going to trust that being let in a little at a time is progress, and that eventually seeing a whole picture will be worth something. 

because i am so sick of being disappointed by people. 

in this way i will at least know the mechanism that has the potential to disappoint and be less afraid of its consequences. 

alright.