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FA/MC
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You believe in curses?
Stories do change a lot. I mean, yes the stories themselves do change over time, but I mean they do a lot to shape and influence what's in people's minds. And each of our realities are only as real as our perceptions. There is no such thing as a 3rd person point of view. That's a voice which can be assumed, a claim with no greater validity than the claim that one is god.
Which is to say, your_guess_is_as_good_as_mine I suppose.
Stories like The_Sixth_Sense which was a pretty mediocre film but wow what an amazing premise. It does the Groundhog_Day thing or the_Truman_Show thing where the context overshadows the actual film. You ever wander around with a question or a doubt in your head as to whether or not you're alive?
I have.
11 years ago to this day I tried to make a decision. I got in my own way, as usual. But this is something which I had planned for a long time. I took a loaf of bread a fifth of scotch and a few bags of painkillers and walked to the levee. I overdosed, intentionally.
But here's the thing: I was giving myself an out. Or at least a chance. I knew that the ibuprofen wasn't going to carry any kind of lethality. It was just going to give me gastritis (and oh my fuck it did, I was twitching in bed for ...somewhere between 9 and 16 hours). But then again, the NyQuil had acetaminophen and that actually could've done the job. It was a gamble.
I was drunk, obviously. I got impatient waiting for something to happen, I remember roaming around back towards town. I remember jumping a fence. I remember the glass breaking from the scotch, probably from falling out of my pocket. I remember looking down at my hand and seeing blood, taking the shape of the lines in my palm like it was trickling from my arm but I couldn't see from where. I blacked out.
I remember waking up to see a pretty scraggly guy, Willie_Nelson looking guy but more crotchety. He standing what seemed like about 15 feet away but I don't know. I guess I was drunk and belligerent. I scowled and told him, "I'm always ok." "Just checkin" he said. It's still the only time I've ever come into contact with someone who I could believe might have been a literal angel. I still don't know. I guess I eventually got my bearings. I had brought my house key with me too. I knew I might've needed it.
The walk home was probably about 10 blocks east 5 blocks north give or take. Something I'd done a hundred times. But it had never felt more surreal. It was such a quiet, clear, calm dawn. It was an early Saturday dawn so you don't really expect many early risers in that part of that town but I distinctly remember that I didn't run into or even see a single living soul.
It was in that walk that I had to genuinely and sincerely consider whether or not I was dead. If I had the rest of my life I will never be able to communicate how that feels. I could never hope to make anyone understand unless they've been through it themselves.
Went to the ER the next day, just to make sure I hadn't completely compromised my liver. Receptionist who checked me in's reaction of disgusted and disturbed when I very meekly explained my situation and my request for treatment is something that will never ever leave me. Apart from that staff and 3 people I never told anyone about it. First person isn't in my life anymore in any way but I think they know not to tell. Second person, not likely to forget about it but I didn't really tell the story, I just casually dropped the fact. Third person, who knows. They've either told 30 people or they forgot completely or both. That's someone I never could trust, and yet they're one of the only people I ever told. Life's little ironies. Or perhaps not so ironic for me to choose to be emotionally vulnerable with them considering I was trying to and eventually did fuck the shit out of them. But I still didn't have to tell them that.
I don't have to be here now either but I'm starting to get the impression that there are things that I can't hide from, no matter how hard I try to hide them. There are these things that linger in me as I try to find meaning, purpose, try to understand myself and maybe convince myself of my value and maybe try to understand or to rationalize why I've never really felt wanted.
I really mean that. Nobody has ever really managed to make me feel wanted. Do you believe in curses? Believe in ghost stories, things like The Sixth Sense? Or how about this one: story of the man who goes down to the crossroads and sells his soul to the devil. Believe that could happen? I say maybe. I don't know. Your guess still as good.
I loved to sing. When I was young, when I was a kid or in the car or out in public or just by myself, wherever whenever I always loved singing. But I was just really bad at it. There's a certain time in an adolescent boy's life where they haven't really developed yet. There's even this method, created by old school catholic Italians, you might know what I'm talking about but I don't really want to get into it. Suffice it to say that puberty changes a whole lot of things. In the case of vocalism sometimes too.
And sometimes not. There are people who can go their life without ever really having the capacity to carry a tune. 1 in about 500,000 humans has perfect pitch, but about 1 in 20 is tone deaf. Is it any wonder Pitbull is more popular than Bach? I guess Bach should've shot some good music videos.
Either way, I didn't have much of a purpose back then either. I was getting over some shit, felt like I had a life that was taken away from me by the adults who were responsible for me that were behaving like children, leaving me to fend for myself in a lot of ways. I always felt like I was being told to pipe down, be quiet, stop talking, stop being so annoying, stop calling attention to yourself, nobody wants to listen to you, stop singing. Stop singing. Don't sing in public. Don't sing in the car. Don't sing in front of other people. Stop singing.
Something did happen. I did go to a place where 2 roads intersect perpindicularly. I said some things, made some kind of offer. I wanted to have a great singing voice.
Not much longer after that happened I started singing in the shower, feeling the echo of the walls and discovering my resonance. I discovered the ability to really hear myself as an instrument, to adjust myself and to use myself. And I can say without ego that I became very fucking good in a short amount of time.
I just never understood how much I didn't want to sing in front of strangers. How little I wanted their attention, how little I respected their opinions, how much resentment I held for the general public for how much less they loved music than me and what the average Joe and Josephine were doing to kill the thing I cared about much more than humanity. How I would come to feel like I was casting my pearls before swine. How I would go to a karaoke bar as an adult and keep my seat because I didn't see a point in performing for these people, not even the ones I liked.
I might have sold my soul. And for a gift I refuse to use. Something which, if I never give it away, will die with me.
Or maybe nothing happened. Nothing at all.
My brother was my biggest bully. He was so harsh and hostile and intolerant. He would be the very first person to criticize at any little excuse, the first person to tell me to pipe down, stop singing. Wouldn't hesitate to take as much of his bullshit out on me as he felt like. There are many different things that have crushed my confidence and sense of self_worth over time, but none had a deeper impact than what my brother did when we were growing up. No other siblings, and 2 parents that weren't nearly as unkind but they were just as judgmental and as unsympathetic as my brother. They did nothing to protect me from him. He was part of our nucleus, it's not like we could get rid of him.
But he stepped out on his own. He ran away the first time just for a few months, came back not with his tail between his legs but with some stoicism and lessons. Second time was for about 5 years. Off the map without a trace, nobody in my family heard a word from him. Then he popped back up, 9 years ago. A little over 2 years after I woke back up from that nap.
We had a little reunion thing, in that place where I still lived. My mother and father, officially divorced for years, and my brother. All coming down for some sort of reconciliation. I really wanted to tell them about that day. What I had meant to do to myself.
I took a little walk with my brother beforehand. Talked a little bit about the past, and about secrets. It really seems like he calmed down, like he found things to care about and ways to care. But he never really undid what he had beaten into me.
He was talking vaguely and indirectly about his own story. He said something that night that I would never forget if I tried. He said, talking about our parents but also just speaking generally, "you never tell them the truth." He didn't say lie or don't lie, he just said what he said.
I still can't tell if he's hurting me. Then or now or ever. I'll never be able to know which way is up when it comes to my brother. I don't think I'll ever be able to deal with it. But I took his advice. Whether he meant to advise me or not, I took it. I didn't tell them.
I'm pretty sure that to this day the single hardest thing that I've ever had to do in my life was to set up my room, or to reset it that is, after that attempt. My tiny shitty little room in that tiny shitty little upstairs apartment in which I was subletting. I had to make my bed, again, set up my folding table of a desk, again, get all of my stuff out of my closet and drawers, again. I had to re calibrate my entire material life. Unpack from a vacation that I never took. And I've never ever said that to a single living soul.
Until "now" whatever that means. You're really part of something skite. You're really making a serious addition to the collective consciousness of experience, just by knowing. Just by seeing. Just by being here.
I just don't feel like I can keep myself to myself anymore. So here I am, maybe dead, maybe cursed, maybe just delusional, maybe just really need to get laid but it doesn't matter. I have secrets. I have so many more things in me that will never come out. The things that I'll die with.
But for the time being, while I (think I) am alive, are these secrets just things I live with? Is protecting something's secrecy a reason to live or just a test of willpower or neither? Is it a burden to be carrying all this shit that is myself without ever giving it to another person to have and to hold and to understand? Or is it okay to hide the most important parts of me and to still want to be wanted?
Don't know. Still wandering. Still_lost_in_the_woods. But I tell ya one thing, I'm sure tired of all this indecision. I'm tired of leaning on the brakes so much. I just ought to accept that life is a big disappointing post credit scene and that the stories never really begin or end, the stories are just more of these fucking games we play in order to satisfy ourselves, to feel a sense of purpose or amusement, or just to pass the time.
But if I know one thing it's that I do not want to die. My self decided, somewhere in the ether, some kind of place or time I went to when I was blacked out. I crossed over to the other side and I said no and I came back. For whatever reason, I already made this choice. So let me just etch all_of_this_of_me in stone, here, take the stories down from off the pedestal I placed them on, and get the fuck on with whatever this is.
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