Introduction

It’s 5:19PM, and my right middle knuckle is bruised. It’s not nearly as bruised as I’d like it to be, but a body can only allow one to punch solid brick so hard. 

I’m sipping on a passionfruit La Croix, and pronouncing it properly—none of that ‘la croy’ bullshit that US marketing has upended—and am staring out the window. A Thai basil, habanero, and chili red pepper plant are all sat on the windowsill, as an older man passes the corner with two dogs on a tight leash. If only I could keep myself on as tight of a leash.

It’s day fifty-fucking-something of quarantine, and the last two weeks have seen me attempting to reintegrate the working life with the isolated one. I knew I was in deep water—but shit. I didn’t expect this.

Three

Are we, as sentient beings, deserving of love? And if yes, then how much love does one deserve?

I’ve always been a hopeless romantic. And to some degree, that hopelessness is as star-crossed as a Shakespearean tragedy. For the previous twenty years of my existence, I have always perceived this tainted, tragic love to be a love between two souls. I searched for security in the relationships of my youth but my psychological masochism always prevented any of those connections to be fully prosperous. I then bloomed into the game of sex and love and searched for the upper hand, expecting it to be the same as the one finishing. But the dynamic between my mind and any other always proved futile. My attention span, short-lived. My desires, self-destructive. And as I burned myself a path through the bodies and minds I viewed as divine or desolate, I, myself, became burned in the process.

I could give a full psychological evaluation, discussing the mental disorders I suffer from, the traumas experienced in my youth, or the coping mechanisms I used to entirely suppress my emotional state as it coincided with the development of my truer consciousness. But alas, this is not a story of the future. Nor is it a transcription of the now. It lives in infamy; it lives in nothing. And I could blame my brain for any part of this narrative—but what good would that do? To deflect the ownership of my reality as much as I deflect my own emotions? A true shame… a travesty that would be.

I am no travesty.

The hopeless romanticism evolved over time. As I found myself dissatisfied time and time again by lovers and friends, and my own mind within, I started to recognize the absurdist pattern in which I partake in. As I created, wrote, and fucked to find purpose in this life of meaninglessness, I salvaged a dignity in losing the boulder each time to the slope of the hill. One would joke and say, well that’s the point. But I began to understand the inner workings of this process. My tireless ascension for the sake of meaning was not for that which I was pushing uphill—it was for the ultimate demise of my own desire.

Instead of my love being one hopeless for its stubbornness in not requiting; it is hopeless for the fact that I long an entity foreign to sentience. And it is merely misfortune that put me upon this planet… within a society which thrives off of interpersonal relationships, and the proof of such via social circles and social media. My life is an experimentation. There is no fact—there is no love.

Two

How distressing it must be, to be the only one inside my head…

I don’t believe in immortality. I also don’t believe that we are mortal beings. We are not beings at all. We are mere figments of time, space, and energy. Some collusion of these atomic entities have provided a way for perspectives, emotions, and a sense of a linear life—but what about the life beyond this planet? The life beyond this solar system?

We are constantly morphing and transforming into different versions of ourselves, for there is no self.

So to say “I am struggling” is to say “I am being reshaped, and I am unsure how to accept it.” This is not to minimize the struggles we face in the world we exist in. It is instead to say that the mass we believe these struggles to accumulate is only one medium. We have the ability to perceive situations in their proper landscape, or to interpret it in an entirely different charade. What could be a minimalist sunset might be the sky’s color screaming for an escape. The beauty we believe these moments to hold might, in reality, be instances of treachery and heartache. The lamppost across the street might be more of a crashing wave than a sturdied piece of wood. But at this moment, it is a lamppost. At this moment, I’d rather be dead than typing these characters. But what if my suicidal desire is merely a breeze in the air?

What if the self I have portrayed myself to be can no longer survive, without it being deadly to the deeper elements of me?

I kid, I kid. I am depressed as ever. And tired of the bullshit.

One

If I have fallen in love would that be true? When the word is the same… it is always ‘you.’

I have been thinking too much of the past. Too much of the people that no longer entertain my social circles, but still entertain the daily train of thought that is mine. Too much of the times I pushed myself beyond mortal comfort. Too much of the actions I took, wishing I had withheld at moments that felt like infinity on my lips. If only these words could be as graceful as that… if only my death would pervade the past like the past does my present.

I understand the changes in life. I just can’t keep up with them. Some find love and successful partnerships in their earlier years. Others stick to their toxic tendencies, and for one reason or another, find safety in codependency. Others have a stick up their ass, perceiving certain relationships as lesser or greater than what the supposed ‘true love’ might be. It seems that we are after this entity as much as we are after the meaning to life… as much as we will carry it to our deaths.

I’ve always needed a certain intensity to my emotional life. I needed a reason to kill myself. I needed a person to stop me. I needed a justification that the feelings I feel can be real—can be interpreted by others and disregarded all the same—and my mind needed this to camouflage its own culprits amongst the trustees at large.

It was never enough to have love or care by somebody. It still isn’t. There are people I knew back in middle or high school that I would’ve died for. And in some twisted way, I believe I have died for, for I am dead to them, and that part of me, dead to me. But as I have found myself in the lonelier hours of one’s twenties, I have found that the few people providing love have grown insufficient. I have found that it is intensity—not desire—that compels me to feel valid. But it is this intensity that fuels the search for external validity all the same.

The one night stands, the stands that were supposed to be one night; the friends I held dearer to my heart than my heart to my chest; the people I adored emotionally as much as I did physically; the filler material for me to perceive my life to be okay; the people who have continually attempted to care or adapted to my needs—all fracture me the same. None of these are fulfilling. None of these are validating. But at times, they are intense. And that intensity drives me to places beyond the stability of my mind. A place I desire more than any relationship, more than any security, more than the breath in my lungs to remain. 

I want relationships, I want to know people better, to push my own limits. Not the limits of my comfort or familiarity—but the limits of my sanity. I want to be able to say: “I might be dead—but this is what caused me to be.” Because I can’t own up to my own depressing desire.

I’d rather be dead than know love. I’d rather be dead than know life. I have always functioned this way, but now I recognize it. And still, I’d rather find comfort in the absolute finality than the infinite probabilities that existence has to offer.

I’ve said it before, I’ve repeated it since: I am not built to exist. 

Yet I exist all the same.

I am searching for friendships, relationships, and romances that will never be sufficient for the principles of the search. I want to become lost in the world and its people because I have been far too lost, for far too long, in my own mind.

I don’t believe love to be possible for me. I don’t believe relationships to healthily pervade my life. I do believe, however, for the rain to fall as subtly as it does when the sun shines and the clouds appear parted. And perhaps in this severance, I can find myself a solitude. An inner peace with the happenings of the world around me—but a space I can call my own between it all. 

I still smoke cigarettes. I haven’t been sober for a full week in weeks. I still search for sex to numb my emotions. I continue to overeat to have a reason to feel shitty. But I am done with these actions. Why? I cannot say. But I am. I want to be. 

Epilogue

I cannot say what I desire. I cannot say what I am living for, or what I am living towards. Through the writing of this passage, I have sat dreamily looking out the window, thinking of spaces in the Northeast or other areas of the world where I can search for a lonelier solace, a more peaceful mind, a more rooted existence. But these thoughts, like all my actions, are futile. I have set up efforts to change my life in the upcoming weeks, but if any action is to be taken is still to be determined. I have burnt bridges, people, and myself that I remain now in a world as desolate as the one my mind says I deserve. It is a desolation akin to destruction—both inherent and inescapable. But I remain. I remain and I have no reason to… in a world that would rather forget my name than ask how I’m doing during a global fucking pandemic. I can’t blame people, however. We are all looking for comfort these days… and for many, that is in what is familiar, or what was. But like the world around me, my past is torched, and I am left to the few devices, shattered but retained that accompany me with my depressing outbursts. If I could scream to be heard, I would. But screams are always so misunderstood. And it is exactly that that I was, in passing, to the people I started to love. The people and the world that I began to know. My attempt at a life beyond the life that I feared was fearful all the same. I am barren now—but I remain.

I don’t believe in having a place in this world. I don’t believe in friends that live in the same neighborhood. I don’t believe in love that transcends the passage of time. I don’t believe in purpose, and because of that I choose to not make one for myself. There is peace amongst much of the beliefs I lack, but I am distressed all the same. Because while I have accepted these entities as not being practical or possible, I long for them all the same; and I fear I will forever long but never retain. 

I want to do more than remain, but perhaps that is all I should for now. I am deprecatingly envious of those who have what I desire—for better or worse. And I know it is the fuckery of my own perception, but I feel outside the movement of the world, not within the pieces of the parted sky.

If I remain as fractured as the clouds are on a sunny day, would someone come along and say that they like it that way? In what environment would this be? To live in a world, to know people, to know love, and be me?