Wish in one hand..

Have you ever felt like dying? Have you ever felt like you could die happy? Sometimes I'm not sure what the difference is. I test and test and test my limits, and in this case even proclaim that I have found the answer; that I've changed, by God, and it's time to reap the harvest of happiness that I have sown. I declare my discovery with one side of my mouth while I second-guess and trash talk it out of the other. Who but yours truly could be so completely ass backwards and confused? Who but me could get so fiercely behind something so hollow and useless? You can't imagine what it feels like to constantly butcher everything that you love on a regular basis. It's.. elating. Thrilling. Miserable. I think that I must be addicted to the bitter sweetness of love's demise, because I can't stand to watch it in life. I have proven this time after time.

Or at least, that's what I used to think. I once was a liar, an embellisher; I once painted pictures of myself for others that had little or nothing to do with the real me, wearing a vast array of pseudo-attractive masks and legends that often had only the most insubstantial of roots tucked into reality, putting their strange and beautiful forms between the eye of the beholder and my true face so that I didn't have to recognize the ugliest pieces of myself. As long as these unsightly flaws and defects were hidden from everyone else, I felt that I could sweep them under the rug, as it were; I even became so good at spinning these fictional versions of myself that I could often sneak the truth past myself and fall victim to my own glamour, thus perpetuating the fantasy ever more efficiently, deceiving all and any who cared enough to look.

Self consciousness has ruled my life for as long as I can remember. The desire to be something that I am not is nothing new to me. I have found, in my newfound policy of brutally honest self-reflection, that there are many contradictions inside of me, many desires and lamentations and passions that by their very existence deny one another. I want to love and protect, but also be free and weightless; I want a home so badly that I overlook the one that I have found until I have made my way to the "other side," and the grass is not as green as it had looked from afar. My heart is not satisfied with all that it loves and desires when it is within my grasp; it glories in hindsight, always yearning to bleed for sweet memories or distant dreams that were tangible but have found a new and less erratic horizon to call home, leaving my whims and unpredictability to thrash and make their demands to an audience of none.

Lonely.

Purged.

Unchallenged.

Just the way I (hate need spurn) like it..

If this latest attempt at self-destruction has truly left me bereft of the one thing I love in this world, I will have succeeded once more in reducing myself to zero, thus perpetuating my beloved cycle for the umpteenth time and securing my place in Hell once and for all. The truth is, I don't know how much more of this I can stand. Every time I throw in the towel and decide that I need to put my nose back to the grindstone, I look around me to find that opportunity has already moved on to find some young and enterprising soul that will close their eyes and fall into its arms unquestioningly rather than peppering it with useless doubts and fears before taking that grudging leap of faith.

I thought I knew who I was; for years I thought that I could not do without the things that set me apart the most in the world, the streets that made me hard and the drugs that made me bizarre. I thought I could not bear to lead a life bereft of the senselessness and chaos that had defined me for so long, and now I am faced with a future that has nothing else to offer--not even the greatest truth that I have found and fought so hard to hang on to, my one true love--and am disgusted by its implications. I do not want the bitter sweet tale in my arsenal, because its darkly beautiful tones of loss and sacrifice do not interest me as much as they may have interested the liar that once lived inside of me. I am no longer the actor that I was; I am not the suave, fast-talking corruptor that I was, nor am I the care-free womanizing player that I once liked to think. I do not take pride in the things that I once did, and pretty new faces no longer hold any sway over me. I want to be remembered as a bumbling, good-hearted protector with eyes for only one girl in the world; I want to find her next to me in the dark every time I wake up in the middle of the night, and I want every tear she cries to meet its end against my lips. I don't want to be a hustler.. I want to be a turkey moose. I don't really know what to do with myself at this juncture, and I can't think of anything to do but pray for an answer.. for once in my life I guess I will have to take the leap of faith, trust in the universe to put things in their rightful places, whether that coincides with my desires or not.