As the Dove Flies Away . . .

So. . . I’m crazy. Definitely. But what are we going to do? Just live with it, I suppose. There was a time when I would have thought you were the crazy one, but I’ve since realized that the rules the rest of the population seem to operate so smoothly with don’t always apply to me. Almost never, actually. There has been a lot of anger, resentment, jealousy, and heartache involved in that epiphany. Maybe someday I’ll find out why I’m excluded, and then I may be able to use it to my advantage.

Can you be blamed for things you cannot control? It seems to happen on an almost regular basis. Yet, one would think that I would not judge myself upon that which I cannot control. This is common sense. It is not my fault. This much I’m certain. It’s gone on too long and has a voice too persistent to put me at blame.

In the past, the blame was, and should have been, placed squarely on my shoulders. I tried not to regret, but the simple fact was I caused my own alienation; it was my decision to end paradise; it was my actions which kept me out; it was my words which pushed me away. And when the smoke had cleared, it was my cowardice that ended all hope of retraction. Cowardice when I didn’t take it back, cowardice again when I watched it leave, in stunned silence, certain that it would come back, soon, begging for redemption like it had so many times before.

And then I became the victim of the blind. Suddenly, it was my bleeding heart ignored.

The pain of losing something so completely within my grasp did not go away after the years, but I had not truly felt it, either. Why should I feel my own sting? Why should I be the recipient of the pain I gave away? It would have hurt enough if I wouldn’t have been faced with the endless reminder that I was not burned in any way I had not burned, that I was not destroyed in any way I had not destroyed. How could I help but feel responsible, when the actions mirrored mine, actions which would have been unheard of in the previous, angelical form. How could I not agonize over the knowledge that I had defaced the purity, that I had created the harlot, that I had planted the seeds that grew this bitch, and then I tendered it lovingly and watched it sprout, with jubilant pride; watched it in stunned silence as it consumed the garden and destroyed my fruit, and then cooperated hopelessly as it consumed me.

I have peace now, for the first time in a long time. I am able to accept the fate that has been handed to me. The fate which, to some degree, I have carved for myself; but to some degree, has been carved for me maliciously. The dream had not been shared for a long time, anyway. I just wish I would have known I shared it while I still did. The only sting left is the silence; but it is in response to my own. I’ll never learn.

But here I am, sitting in my grandparent’s bathroom, crying like a little baby. It was official; mental breakdown had begun.

The fight to ward it off had been a long, valiant one. Through three years of hate and anger and sadness; the immediate whiplash of freedom and expectation, fulfilled at first, then absent in a way that I never thought it could have been. The loneliness of self destruction. The empty room, and I’m sitting on the bed, not knowing how long I’m going to be here, where I go afterwords, but all I care about is how I got here in the first place. (How do you lose sight of the trail so quickly? You look around and it’s gone, like life has covered your tracks in snow. And now you’re paying people to help you find out how you got here, and at the same time you have to discover where exactly here is and where the fuck do I go now??) The oasis. The break in life that saved it. The meetings. The poor losers sitting around, confessing their darkest fears to people they barely know. If they’re lucky. I don’t even get that; I go to them as a complete stranger. And yet, they embrace me for absolutely no reason than someone embraced them. And before you even know what happened it has become the drug it’s designed to fight. It is the escape from myself, when its purpose is to force yourself upon you for the first time in, what? six years? Since the warts?

But you hold on, not by the support of strangers. Not by the bottle. And even your friends and family are useless. You have one weapon, and that is the light, staring at you in the void, calling your name. And as long as you can see that light and hear that voice, the rest is arbitrary. So I hit my head. . . so what? As I lay on the table, waiting to test for permanent brain damage before they staple my skull back together, my mind will retain the only five seconds of the entire night. I wake up the next morning, and I knew something was wrong, not from the blood on my hands, but this five seconds. I wash up, take the car ride, listen about Joey Ramones’ death, sit on the foot of my bed, more uncertain than I’ve ever been in my entire life, and all I can think of is that five seconds and that one, meaningless question I knew the answer to before I even thought to ask it. I don’t care about the head injury, truth be told, I don’t even care about the question. But the fact that it was the only thing I remembered from the entire night scared me more than I’ve ever been scared in my entire life. The light had faded out of existance. And I had watched it.

So when someone, some imposter comes along with a light. . . it looked the same, didn’t it? Of course, it didn’t, not really. I saw the subtle differences; the small little changes that completely alter the entire makeup of the thing. And I bet all that is good about my life upon this lure. Did I plant the lure? No. But I bit. And I knew what I was biting. So why should I blame the fisherman? Because it’s easier than dealing with the pain, that’s why. Someone just shot me in the face; I don’t want to sit and wallow in the fact that I was holding the gun. He committed suicide. He’s gone. He was a washed up, one hit wonder with a drug problem and more bullets than sense. He drank a fifth, felt the snakebite, and now the only thing between the barrel and the brick is his temple. Get over it.