And that frankly will not fly, you'll hear the shrillest highs and the lowest lows with the windows down, and this is guiding you home.

It hit me. The anxiety. The insecurity. The busy busy mind that makes it hard to differentiate between the rational and the irrational. The fears. The insomnia.

My eyes are so heavy, which is cool because it matches the feeling in my chest so at least we have some continuity. But every vein and artery, and even every little capillary, are all pulsating so intensely that I can feel my heartbeat under my skin - all of it - which incidentally makes it difficult to sleep.

This shit is so subtle. It sneaks up and feels like it's nothing and things are fine and you are fine and then suddenly it is like when the it gets foggy in a zombie apocalypse movie and everyone knows some shit is about to go down and faces are going to get eaten and everyone is sitting there in anticipation for the inevitable - when the zombies come out of the fog and there is no end to them in sight because you can't even see anything. How do you clear the fog? I want to know where these zombies are coming from and how many I have to defeat.

Fuck. My brain is in awful shape (not really, I'm just being dramatic, although it definitely doesn't feel very nice in there).

Fuck.

I'm filling out the 2020 Census.

I'm a dead man walking here, but that's the least of all my fears (ooh) underneath the water.

I really love being wrong sometimes.

Actually, I enjoy it all the time, just at varying phases of the process. Sometimes it takes a little longer for me to enjoy it, but I get there.

Today, and many other days, I found out I was not wrong and I really wish that I did.

"Just reach out to them. They probably don't even know."

They knew. They knew that I was suffering. They knew it and they saw it longer than I have. They saw the change start to happen over a year ago and no one talked to me. They talked about me to each other, but no one reached out to me. So when people feed me that bullshit about "just reach out to them, you don't know, you have to stop trying to read their minds," just know that I'm not an idiot. I'm actually really emotionally intelligent and intuitive. I know people and I hear everything that they don't say.

People don't realize that sometimes silence says more than words ever could, and that their eyes scream everything that their mouths refuse to speak.

So please don't tell me that I'm wrong anymore about this. Don't give me that, "have you tried..." bullshit. How about this. How about next time someone wants to ask me that they ask themselves if they've fucking tried. How much have they actually fucking tried? What fucking effort have they put into showing that they value me more than what I can do for them when they need something from me?

I reached out today. I told someone I was close with I wanted to die and I thought of all kinds of ways to do it and how and when. He confirmed that people didn't want to be around me and he gave me a quick pat on the back and told me everything was going to be okay and if I wanted to talk just to reach out to him or any one of the friends he literally just said don't want to really be around me. These used to be my closest friends. I thought he was leaning in to give me a hug and I was so happy because I haven't been hugged in weeks. And I went to embrace him and he gave me a cold pat and my heart sank further.

Wait, that's a lie. I got hugged twice, but neither of those hugs were from people who I am close enough with to let that do anything. They don't know a thing about me. But I still appreciate it. I just haven't been embraced lovingly in weeks. Not since my sister left from her visit.

I asked myself, "if I died would they even care?" I realized that was a silly question. Of course they would. They would care for a minute so they could talk about how I was selfish and how I should have talked to someone and all that other bullshit that people like to say when they pretend to actually love and care about someone.

Remember how poetic this used to be. I mean I was still a mess, but at least I put effort into being creative. Now it's just fucking pathetic.

Now I'm just pathetic.

Just take it, take it slow now, our bodies in line

I want to die.

Oh, if I could go back in time when you only held me in my mind.

I’m in a rough place internally. Normally I’m like a star that shines really bright and helps lift up people around me and I have people turn to me and I can help them and I thrive in that because it is so rewarding and helps me. But over the last few years there has been like a shroud that has gotten darker and heavier and it has really blocked out that star that is kind of just smoldering inside of me. I’m kind of just flailing trying to find a way to clear it away and every once in a while a little burst of it shines through, but then it gets hidden again. I just want to feel like me again. Because I was so attractive in so many ways. Like in a human way. I felt like I was easy to love. I was easy to fall in love with. Right now I feel hard to love. I’m trying to get back there, but with the things I’ve learned.

I believe in ecstasy, but you might never love me. So can you tell me how we get it right? I've got to be cautious.

I just want someone to exist with me.

Like when people visit me or spend time with me I have to entertain them.

But that's not what I want.

I want people to want to be around me and make that effort.

And then I want them to be okay with just being around each other.

I want someone in my life who can sit with me and do their own thing and I can do my own thing.

I just want to be enough to not have to perform.

Wake me up with a sign, tell me in your own true words that I deserve this.

Lately

No, for a long time. 

I have felt depressed and lonely. I have put on a face that is functional, and in some ways I am. For now. I am getting by. For now. But I think that is coming to a close.

I want to say that I feel incapable, but I don't. I know I can do something, but I feel like I am JUST not doing it. I look at myself and I see someone lazy. But if I am lazy, why do I feel like everything I do requires so much work AND feel exhausted every day at the end of the day from that work? I must be doing something for my biology to tell me that I need to recover.

Is it because I am simply not prioritizing the things I need to do? Because I feel this feeling of impending doom and dread that seems to come along with things that are priorities not being taken care of. I don't feel the things that I do instead of my work is a priority. I don't feel like writing this is more important than the homework I should be doing and the emails I should be sending and the visits I should be making to people to get help. I feel pathetic. 

I feel like I waste my time with everything I do. I feel like a waste.

I want to not exist, but now that I have existed and become aware of my existence I have come to fear more than anything ever -

    to the point where I have regular, sometimes many times a day, crushing panic attacks which leave 

    me sobbing and rocking on the floor and hitting my head with my fingers while mumbling: 

        no no no no no no no no get out of there no no no no no please stop no no no everything is 

        going to be okay everything is going to be okay everything is going to be okay everything is 

        going to be okay everything is going to be okay everything is going to be okay...

    for what feels like forever and no time at all simultaneously -

is eternal oblivion. That is I am afraid that when I die everything just stops and I am not aware of that happening, and I no longer have a past that I can look back on, nor can I see that I have done anything that impacted the future, and no lives or anything that is here is continuing to exist because existence for me is just gone. It is like matter and antimatter colliding and obliterating each other leaving nothing. 

I have listened to speakers and read the work of writers who discuss loneliness and depression and anxiety and mental health in the hopes that I will find anything that might help me. At the same time I am bombarded with this "only you can help yourself" bullshit.

"You just have to do it."

"All you have to do is start it and the rest will follow."

"Just showing up is 90% of the battle."

"You need to reach out and communicate these things."

[insert the thousands of little anecdotes that people say to try and motivate you]

I have determined all of that to be bullshit.

"You just want other people to fix things for you."

"No one can do the work for you."

"Stop being lazy."

"You only have yourself to blame."

I fucking know.

"You're worthwhile."

"You are capable."

I fucking know that too.

"I care about you."

You don't even fucking know me. You only know what I show to you. If you knew me then you would know that I am a lazy piece of shit that literally wastes everything he is capable of doing and barely follows through with anything.

I fucking know how smart I am. That doesn't mean anything. Smart people rot away in bars and on the streets talking about how smart they are and how stupid everyone else is, while the stupid people they talk about live long successful and happy lives.

I fucking know that I am talented, but if you knew some of the people I know then you would see I still don't hold a candle to them. They are more talented and they actually do something with that talent. 

I fucking know how many other people have mental health issues and get through everything in their life in spite of it. I fucking get it. Look at all these fucking people who have it as bad or worse and still get through it. I look at myself every fucking day and see a fraud who is just coming up with excuses, and yet it doesn't change. If you knew what went on inside me you would know that I am a lazy piece of shit that literally wastes everything he is capable of doing and barely follows through with anything.

I feel so fucking alone. And I know that there are people there for me.

"I'm here for you."

"If you need anything just call or text me."

"I understand what that's like, so if there is anything I can do to help then let me know."

"You need to reach out to people."

"You're cared about."

I KNOW.

I know.

I know that there are people out there who care, and there are people out there who understand. That doesn't make it go away.

"It's the human condition."

Is it though? Why do some people feel so fulfilled? Why are there communities of people not feeling like this? Is it the human condition to feel all of this and infinitely more that I can't even put into words? If so, HOW THE FUCK do they do what they do?

I still feel alone.

The thing is, I'm not even sure I don't want to exist. I actually thing I want to exist and I feel like I am barely doing that. 

You are just like an avalanche, cold as I might have guessed...

I feel...

I feel everything.
All at once.
It won't stop.
My head won't stop.
Why won't it stop?
Oh, God. Please stop.

Please, not another stupid fucking fire metaphor. That shit is getting old. How about that gentle breeze shit you talk about in the name of all this madness. "A Transcendent Zephyr?" Sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me.

You fake.
You fraud.
Stop pretending like you are actually anything more than a filler person.

I want to be more than a filler person.
I'm not fake.
I'm not a fraud.
I am sincere.

My heart is gentle to everyone but me.
I am kind and compassionate to everyone but myself.
I am the cruelest person I have ever met.

Everybody wants a reason for everything, it's so much easier with someone or something to blame.

Sometimes when I think back to the days when I shared this incredibly intimate experience of feeling and creating and being and expressing with people to whom I could hardly be closer, I am overcome with sadness. This is another lifetime - another time line where we continued to grow together and move forward to impact people's lives in a positive fashion - that has passed by.

"And when these walls come crashing down what will we hide behind? All the things we're looking for are so far from what we find."

How serendipitous for me to have written that with them. It is a question I've spent many years trying to answer, but for most part have I given up on that. I think that what I have found is that eventually we are left with nothing to hide behind. We just have to face that things happened the way they did and discover that being heartbroken - which is totally okay to be for however long you need - over being forced to leave behind that one thing that kept everything together for you doesn't mean you have nothing left. Even if what you find is not what you wanted, you are not left empty-handed.

When I was 14 I went to a summer camp where people built intensely close bonds in one short week while we worked on developing essential life and leadership skills. At the end of that week everyone would part ways. Back then we didn't have the ability to keep in touch via social media. We had AIM and MSN Messenger and home phones, but it wasn't nearly as easy to keep in touch and still be a part of each other's lives as it is now. So on our last day we sobbed, me especially. I had never really experienced what it was like to have close friends like that where I didn't immediately start lying to them to try and make myself seem like someone I wasn't. It hurt knowing that I felt accepted for the first time in my entire life and that I wouldn't see them again. I went back home to face the darkness in my heart alone again. About two weeks later I got a picture in the mail of our group standing together after our final team building exercise. On the back it read, "Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened." At the time I felt like that was exactly how I should see it, but now I reject that. I think you can cry because it's over AND also smile because it happened. You're allowed to feel the totality of the human experience.

That's how I feel about losing that part of my life with those guys that were closer than family to me. My heart still aches when I try to play music because of how much it hurt to have that ripped away from me by the people I trusted most in the world. However, I was happy when I was there. Every part of that experience was real. The love that I shared with my best friends was real. The fun we had, the support we provided each other, the companionship on this journey through life...all of it was real. I still cry sometimes, but that's okay. I also smile even if I am a little sad behind it. So I reject the notion that you can't be both.

I have a catchphrase I hold onto from every one of my friends. One of my best friends while in a residential treatment center in Utah used to quote Kahlil Gibran's "On Pain" all the time and it has become the catchphrase I held onto from him.

It reads...

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy; And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields. And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief. Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility: For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen, And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

...maybe one day I will be able to create again without feeling like I am going to collapse from the weight of my heavy heart. For now I will forgive myself for smiling through the pain and crying through the happiness.

Cap and a stem, catch a wave on us - splish - take a shot, make a friend, just enjoy the moment.

Stuck.

That single word would have sufficed when instead I used thousands in an attempt to describe an indescribable feeling. I should have given up on that. I just needed to say where I was in that moment; I was stuck.

(Can we just take a moment to look at that word and read it in our heads a bunch of times until it sounds weird and looks weird - like it doesn't belong and that it's not a real word? ...Stuck... Does this happen to anyone else, or is that just me? Sometimes I fixate on a word until it feels weird to look at and to say. I'll start to feel a little gross inside. Actually...this is starting to sound more and more like one of my neuroses. Forget it. Let's get back to that existentialism bullshit.)

So here I am. No fires are burning. No ghosts are in my bed except my own on the nights I irrationally choose the couch. (Seriously, though...why do I do that?) I'm not wrapped up in self-pity. Things are pretty good when it comes to my mental state. So why am I not moving forward?

I've searched thoroughly through the halls of my mind over and over again wondering what I am afraid of, or if I am just incapable. I've been here before...but, actually, this is my first time. This time it's different, because I have long since addressed both of those concerns. So now what?

What am I missing?

Why am I still here?

It happened...again.

I am stuck.

I've got feet like concrete and a head like lead.

This feeling...the entirety of the spectrum of emotions...this existence...the constant struggle to move forward and to pick yourself up when you fall...the battles against yourself...the terrible fight...the attempt to simply survive being human.

What makes this time harder than the rest? Why can't I move forward? Every other time, as painful as it may have been, moving forward after losing something important to me was at least feasible. This time, even after all that has happened, I still cannot do it. I should be able to. I know it. Every one around me thinks I am stupid. Fuck it, even I think I am stupid. But even so, no matter what I do I cannot begin to move. So here I am; stuck. I am left with the ghost to haunt me. I fall asleep next to that ghost. I wake up to that ghost. I eat with that ghost. I build this future for myself and the ghost. It is the ghost of what would have been and the ghost of what should be. I said I could be happy if you were. I lied. I'm the farthest from happy knowing that everything that makes you happy now is without me and everything that made me happy feels so empty without you. I say I want to rise to the top with anyone and everyone willing to join me on the journey, but really the only one I care about joining me for that ride is you. All these things I feel are all things I have helped others overcome. Why can't I help myself? Why is it that the only way I have felt this empty feeling disappear since it all fell apart was to look into your eyes or to feel your skin against mine? Why do I feel like such a little fucking bitch for feeling this way? It is so defeating.

If I could go back to the start to break the pattern forming between us.

This is a special kind of hell.

Though silently I walked away, inside I screamed and begged for you to make me stay.

Every step that led me away from you felt heavier and more sluggish.

Maybe that's because it was. 

If I didn't love you so much you would be all mine right now.

In my arms you would lay once again if I didn't love you so deeply.

But I do.

And that is why you love me.

An infinite stream of if-only's flows throw my mind.

They marry well with the I-wish's.

A perfect mix of biochemicals.

Mine with yours.

And still only can they see each other through the glass.

Knowing of each other's presence but unable to mix again.

Only fantasy.

Oh how I wish.

When the world starts to change, life rearranged, this is bigger than you, this is better.

With every breath, every beat of the heart, every fucking blink, it burns.

There it is again; that stupid theme. Be creative for once. It burns? Is there a stupid fucking fire? Are you a fucking broken record? Get the fuck over yourself. Who the fuck even cares about this shit? Stop whining. You're pathetic. Stop making excuses. You're pathetic. Stop being so fucking pathetic. You're pathetic. Just shut the fuck up already.

Fuckit.

I don't wanna feel like this ever ever ever ever ever again.

Yesterday I was sure.
Today the windows have fogged up.
Tomorrow has yet to come.
Tomorrow has also already happened.
Today the windows were also clear.
And yesterday I was also still searching.

I exist in infinite iterations outside the shackles of time.
I exist in the four known dimension and in all the unknowns as well.
Yet I don't exist at all.
However, the me in this reality experiences life in a linear fashion, as a slave to the four known dimensions, to his own existence, and to this single iteration.
Here I am.
Good.
Or.
Bad.
Here I am.
No, I am not fucking high.

And I just keep away from you, keep away from me, you were a song to sing, a way to say I need you more, you need to stay.

White and varying shades of grey drift silently across the blue expanse. The warm light brightens up the dull brick across the way, but none of it reaches me. I am here with only myself and my thoughts, and that is a historically dangerous thing. Especially when my thoughts are as follows.

I miss you. Not as you are now, because who you are now is not the someone I was with. You've become something less. Something more hollow. Empty. I fear you now. Not because of how you can destroy me over and over again, but because you aren't you. You aren't you at all but you look like you. I fear the destruction of the beautiful think you have become in my memory. I want to speak to you. I want to touch you. I want to feel your warmth and see your smile. But I can't. For in my mind and in my heart you are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and touched in my entire life. I'm scared. I don't want to let go, but I know I could never be with you again. This is not because I can't be around you per say. This is because you as you existed before no longer exists now. I still mourn the loss every morning, day, and night. I mourn the loss of the person whose eyes I will never gaze lovingly into again. I can look in yours, but they will no longer be yours.

And I hate that the world is against you because they see the you as you are now. I am the lone soldier fighting to preserve who you once were.

I hate that you still exist somewhere. I hate it because I don't think you will ever let her out again. She was the most beautiful thing I could ever imagine. Life as you have chosen to live it does not take kindly to sincerity. It shuns the truly beautiful.

I will miss you forever and always as you fade. Will anyone ever know what truly incredible person lies dormant in you like I did?

You.
Deserve.
More.

And I do too.