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[Don't worry. None of this is about you]
I can't keep up with my own cheerfulness. This will be my ultimate and glorious demise. Something to fill up our own moment in time, that carelessness of mine that leaves you breathless. I'm so upbeat that I don't even notice when it starts to lag and wear thin. My smile becomes a cookie-cutter and my eyes close to the sun and when I finally do see it in the mirror the crash is so low that it's absurd.
This. This is absurd. How fascinating.
I sit there at the bottom, wallowing in all that filth and shit I've swallowed and created and nurtured, looking up for someone to pull me out. But no one does and I've realized why. It's so simple, I feel absolutely at peace with it. I see, my highs are so high that when I sink low it seems so equally cartoonish and dramatic that it's impossible to take seriously. They know in a day or two I'll snap out of it, realize there's life to live, birds singing, etc. But it's eating at me, lower and lower, my very own swamp of infinite sadness growing and growing to pathetically self-indulgent heights. Lows.
My mistakes are so comical. I'm a perpetual embarrassed teenager - awkward, emotionally retarded and unbelievably self-involved. At the same time I can think of nothing but what they're thinking. What are you thinking, now? Why? Betcha didn't know this didja? I'll bet you knew this all along.
Why be so ridiculous, so honest? Let go, realize it's no big deal. Maybe right now I feel pretty down, but more than that I'm pissed. I know tomorrow or the next day I'll be back to usual and I'll have to live with this foolish moment of self-pity, this disgusting and over-analyzed second of life. What a fucking waste, how desperately hilarious.
What's worse - being ridiculous or knowing I'm being ridiculous? Frankly, I don't know. Here's a better question - why do I feel that I have to share this? Next time you see me give me a hard slap on the face, bucket of water on the head. Say,
"Open your eyes, now. Wake up."
[And now back you your regularly scheduled programming]
Here's something better to leave you with, a quote that is completely unrelated to anything and everything I just laid out. This quote makes me feel a bit better, a bit less alone. How lonely.
"When do we have sex? When we're happy, sad? When we can turn our bedrooms into a stage? When our hormones lead us to it almost entirely of their own accord? When we feel that the noises of our bodies, the texture of our arches and thrusts, are too precious to escape the notice of another? When we are bored and can't think of a good reason to say no? When we are trying to prove to ourselves that we are, in fact, beautiful, powerful, alive; or conversely, bruised, careless, and expendable? When we find someone with whom, for whatever reason, we are willing to take the greatest risk: the risk of realizing mid-act that he or she is not IT. You may love this person so that you daily weep with adorations; still, he or she will never be the real object of sex. The real object is a nonobject. No matter the position we take, we will never possess what we desire. We will never even embody it, because what we desire is something beyond our skins, beyond the skins of our partners. And since we take this risk, we must also be ready to hate them- in fact, we must already hate them just a little bit so that we might someday discard them- saying, You, you have failed to make me happy, failed to make me rise above myself for more than a moment at a time- and then forget our own failures, our inability to make our moans give noise to every feeling for which sex is a substitute."
-Amy Benson
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