Think of it what you will
2007-04-15, 6:48 p.m.

First off, i did NOT write this. This was written by a friend of mine, and publicly posted on myspace. I have my opinions, but i won't pollute you with them. I just thought that parts of this were really beautiful, mostly that loooong paragraph 3/4ths of the way down.
enjoy.

"I now live a life that I do not control.

Surely, for the worse I am in the grip of an anxious instability.

I'm somewhat anxious and restless by nature. Didn't that cross your mind once?

Didn't you notice the fragility that hid, not too well, behind this arrogant facade of bravado and endless sarcasm?

How could you, knowing I teetered, ever on the brink, and then shake the trees again and again and again?

And now how you've pushed me off the mountaintop.

And all the queen's horses and all the queen's men seem to be grinding me up even further.

With every bad dream. They come almost nightly.

With every unanswered phone call.

With every late appearance.

With every less-than forthcoming bit of information I glean from you.

With every bit of reluctance.

With every act of defiance.

With every shake of your head at my behavior!

Grinded up.

Stuck in the boot heels.

Screaming, puking, pulsing, bleeding, shaking, crying, crying, crying.

I'm on fire.

I'm drowning.

I'm suffocating.

That's how I feel.

I feel like you love me sometimes, others not at all.

I feel like I have been made the sacrificial lamb at your dirty altar. Crying out in vain.

I feel like the sweet boy with the strong voice and the weak self-image stuck in a bleeding, bruised and broken Jesus Christ pose. Like every night I have to die for your sins.

I feel like you are the type who asks for forgiveness right before you break another promise. And then you ask for forgiveness again.

Break.

I feel like, even though I've already been sacrificed for you, even though I've already given all the concessions in the world that no other rational person would ever possibly give, even though everyone knew the horror then and everyone knows the even stranger thing, that I have, not just a forgiving bone in my tiny body, but a god-damned forgiving skeleton...that after all of this you won't make the tiniest little sacrifice for me.

And I feel like you know you can't. Like you know you won't.

And your silence on this reeks of agreement.

That your fierce independence and your liberty is more important than the culmination of your heart and mind.

That being wholly, totally free is more important than keeping your love strong and true.

But don't you remember, can't you recall that throaty challenge to your naive idealism:

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."

Don't you remember that? Can't you come to your senses or have your senses come to you?

And did you really never come? Really?

Did you really not like anyone for over "a few weeks" ?

Do you really think lying to me at this point is the best course of action?

From now on I'll find out. And I'll hurt myself when I do, but my self-destructive thirst for knowledge is impossible to quit.

Just like you.

I wish you had always been honest. I wish you were now.

If you want this relationship open on one side then just tell me.

If I am absolutely, completely, one-hundred percent paranoid beyond range or reason then tell me.

Tell me!

Reassure me!

Assuage my fears and find some way to assuage your temptation.

Find some way to clamp it down.

Because remember how sweet I was? Only hours ago...how sweet I am?

Do you remember the walk around town where I fell in love? How we couldn't dye your hair but stained each other forever. My presumption of inviting you over to watch a movie in my dorm at night. My hand touching yours when I helped you with the lock. My hand brushing back your dark, beautiful bangs. My body laying on your bed that same night when I stayed the night. My broken TV and the static on the channels when we jockeyed for position on my bed and you grabbed me and said "come here!" My insides desolving at that moment. Our frightened, little kisses evolving into an expansive dance of passion. Art gallery kisses. Tu sonrisa es como una poema sin palabras. How I was the first boy you had touched in that way for the longest time. How you were the first girl I had touched in years. How we touched and loved each other. How I made you laugh and how I loved hearing it. How I said "howdy" and "folks" and let loose a Fort Worth cowtown accent every once in awhile. How you made fun of the way I said "pillow" and "tour" and how I made fun of you for too many things to mention. How we bickered about God and Christ and discontinous trains of thought. How you didn't care. How I didn't care that you didn't care and left well enough alone. How I tried to make love to you in a stairwell early in the morning. How we spent hours searching for a spot on campus to make love. How we failed. How we went back to my room and did it for two or three minutes. How I apologized and laughed and told you that "I told you so." How we held each other afterward and then did it again for most of Zen Arcade. How so many birthdays and Christmases became the best either of us had ever had. Shanghai River. Strawberry vegan bubble tea with no ice. Black tea with two spoons of sugar. Cake and cookies in the mail. Muffins in the mail and in a heart. My hometown and hummus. Trying to go to the museum. Finally making it so many days later. Helping my dad move. My family all over that mid-sized city. Love in a park. Getting lost there. Getting lost here. Getting lost everywhere. Missing millions of buses. Walking miles and miles there and back again. The agony of time apart. The torture of summer break alone. The magic when you returned. The songs I sang you. The songs I wrote about you. The songs I'm still writing now. The tremor in my voice. The syrup in your scent. Smelling your dirty hair. Loving it. A dozen different voices. The duck. Sarina. Peep. Cornbread. Niloc. Cupcake. Greg. Fuckbird. That foreign guy. Kitty. Puppy. Schfity-five. Your amazing artwork. My silly cartoons. My grand plans. Thinking of you in London. Thinking of you in Frankfurt, Germany. Thinking of you in Amman, Jordan. Thinking of you in Beirut, Lebanon. Thinking of you as I flew over Syria. Thinking of you all over Israel and Palestine. Thinking of you in Chicago, in Dallas, and everywhere in between. Visiting you in Houston. Showing up at your doorstep in Houston at 11 pm when you had no idea I would be so bold. Being bold. Speaking our minds. Never being afraid to tell each other how we felt. Summer nights in a car. Class warfare with Will. Singing A-Ha and R.E.M. as loud as my voice could stand and never caring for anyone's ears. Always trying to make you sing. Getting very mixed results. But always with a smile. Smiles all around. Cocaine cake. Tears, but rarely. The promise of a promise. Finally dying your hair. Taking Spanish together. Being secretive about our relationship the first time. Painfully obvious the second time around. Caring about things together. Always writing our papers at the very last minutes together. Helping each other research. Talking about you in class. Talking about you in class some more. And more. Passing your picture around class. Dancing with you. You begging me to get drunk with you. Me always turning you down. San Antonio sucks without you, and even then you're the best part. Paying for everyone's food. Buying you anything and everything you want, whether it's vegan or not and noting the problem there, but not giving one god damn. Saying "god damn" a lot. Saying "fuck" a lot. Saying "I love you" an infinite number of lots. An infinite number of lots. Silly things. Stuffed animals. Psychic lovers. International. Super. Couple. Never going to Sixth Street together. Going everywhere else together. In multiple cities. Easter. Multiple Easters. Pain and pleasure and lingerie and come and squirting and sucking and licking and slapping and spanking and screaming and talking and scrunching and eating and grabbing and twisting and squeezing and coming and moaning and sighing and sweating and coming and pushing and pulling and coming and wrenching and pounding and coming and holding my mouth shut and you taking my hands away from my mouth and coming and turning up the music and coming and not caring if they hear and coming and loving you, looking in your faces, wanting, starving and needing your eyes and everything else and tight and hard and wet and so many fucking messes and each other's faces dirty, and every single, every, every single orifice, I don't even care now, fucking and making love and becoming one with the movement and the motion and the heart's reclaim a certain dignity undeterred by failure or lack of faith that only knows one thing and knows it well, knows it beyond anything else because it is above everything else with it's unfaltering, immovable, unbreakable pace and position and it screams and shrieks to claim the continent, to claim the right, to cleanse the trouble and the tears and move mountains against the soil, backs against the bricks, ideas into orbit and life into eternity, and it cares not for any, other, single thing but this word and this relation and this truth and this is love. This is us. And everything I failed to mention, that swims in our eyes, or mines in our caves. That licks our own noses or acts like a frog. That sings about moths or when we'll be kissed. That steps in our feet like strength with a body. Falling over and over and over. Recalling our love and life out of order. Seldom hard and seldom mean. Never far and ever green. Not providence nor coincidence. But somewhere in between.

You know that my affection runs circles around the greatest minds' imaginations!

You know that the blood and ink I have spilled, the verse and the voice can fill buildings, will fill more.

Isn't my attention the best you've ever had?

Don't we have a secret language?

Aren't we different people for each other? Well maybe that was a problem...

A big problem.

Why??? Why did you do it?

Don't blame the drugs, don't blame your mind.

Don't you dare blame me.

And what words were spoken? Why do I want to know? Why do I do this to myself?

What did you say about me? Did you avoid it? Some of them asked. More than once. I'd wager a couple dozen times. What was it? Who was I? Who were they? Did you ever use the word "love"? In either case?

Did you say disparaging things about me? Even once? Think hard.

Because, I never did about you, not to other people. Not even when I was my maddest that night you told me about the drugs. Not even then, and that was me at my wits' end.

Hell, where am I now?

How does this feel to me, really?

A punch, a slap, a shot, a slice, a kick...

Doesn't it kick your guts to know that while I was out helping people, or at least trying, while I was learning the knowledge necessary to fight, while I was composing epic works of endearment, while I was getting us on the track to be the couple the world needs to know, while I was working to pay the bills, eat and and buy you the nicest, sweetest things I could afford, while I was letting you have fun without me because I trusted you entirely and completely and even while I was avoiding you to keep you from getting you sick you were out breaking my heart into at least fifteen different pieces?

Or maybe that's just me.

And now I have zero self-esteem and self-image.

I have next to no faith or hope for the future.

I feel completely inadequate.

I feel entirely abused and neglected.

I feel pushed around and trampled on.

I feel taken for granted, taken advantage of.

(I fight myself not to recall but I can't help to understand that I've always been taken for granted and I've always been taken advantage of.

By those closest to me. That, not only on multiple occasions, but indeed as a matter of course, I have been hurt dearly by the ones I loved, who loved me; who should never have hurt me at all.)

I feel used, cheap and dirty.

You probably felt used and dirty from time to time...rightfully so.

But you said the exploitation was mutual.

So what's the frequency, here?

Will you just come up to me one day and ask me how it feels before you give me my heart back and say "thanks for the loan,"?

How do I know I'm not just a longer term object for you to use so that you feel better about yourself?

I've been one of those before for someone.

One of the most shameful things I ever did, immediately after that, was use someone for that very same purpose.

I feel absolutely gross and remorseful bout my behavior even now.

I let someone get fooled, but I told them the truth before dreams of forever set in.

I cut it off very soon after I realized what I was doing.

So what are you doing?

What are we doing?

One of the most painful things I ever heard, and I know what else it's up against, one of the most painful things I heard was when, immediately after you shattered my heart you told me, in the heat of passion or perhaps in the clearest state of mind that you can't do monogamy.

Well is that a lie or is it not?

What do you want from me?

You know what I want from you.

What's the point?

Of this letter...of the songs I write...of the pain I feel...of your reassurances...of our lives in this world...

What's the point?

Yes, I guess I'm talking about meaning.

A life with or without meaning.

I've always held that the only meaning in life is the one you make yourself.

But you never really do anything yourself. No one does.

You make it with those around you, with your friends and family. With your sweetheart, your lover, your husband or your wife. Your soulmate.

Well what a mess you've made!

What can I do?

I'm so abysmally helpless.

But rest assured I'm hopeless as well.

That means I'm forever yours.

The lies, the deception, the betrayal, the base and low actions, the outright, screaming hypocrisy that would be laughable if you were anyone else...it matters. Yeah, it matters a lot.

It's knocked me down a couple dozen pegs.

It's shattered everything I know.

It's made me a shell of the person I once was.

It's turned me into a scared, nervous lunatic.

It...you...have made me the same as you: absolutely pathetic.

I used to be cynical but now I'm just mad.

I used to suffer fools with scorn but now I want to shut them up.

I used to trust you but now I don't know if I ever can.

I used to like some people but now you are making me hate them. The innocent ones!

I used to feel like John Cusack in High Fidelity sometimes, briefly. Now I know I'm some version of that character.

I used to cry when I heard a good song, but now I cry when I think about you.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

I can't stop loving you.

That's the hardest part.

Knowing all that I know, hearing all I've heard, seeing all I've seen...it doesn't even give me the slightest pause.

It just stabs my heart, kicks my guts, burns me up.

But I never get the slightest pause in my affection.

And I'm so scared that you'll leave.

And I'm so mad at myself that I'm scared.

After everything, I'm still your lazy little poet, your sweet, singin' fool.

And I've realized that I can't be anything else.

All this has made me understand that while I am other things, things that come and go, but other things, sure...

You're the only constant.

Everything else changes.

To me; you stay the same.

I stay the same.

We stay the same.

I love you irrevocably, unchangeably, eternally.

Without condition or fail.

Despite your bouts of pure, unadulterated evil, I've come to play Jesus, like the little boy who never wanted the responsibility.

I have the mercy and the forgiveness and in each other we find salvation.

I feel like an idiot, because without you I'm less than zero.

And I have no control."