vision quest

It’s been close to a year since my last entry. I feel much different now compared to then. Although I am still very young, I feel old. Old enough almost to be useless. My tendencies and habits are routine and mundane. Never spontaneous or exciting. I actually HAVE a routine. I long for the free days of my youth driving aimlessly with great friends listening to good music and enjoying a warm summer night. I feel broken. Not in the sense of tired or weary. I feel my spirit has broken. I have lost sight of my boyhood dreams and loves, and accepted into my life mediocrity and foolish compromise. I have accepted the human condition, one of self-loathing and suffering and grief and strife. None of these struggles are being caused by true adversity, but by the daily annoyances that elongate an already endless existence. Ideas I once found glorious and altruistic have now been sullied by the depression of other lives. I want to return home, but cannot. I want to speak my mind, but won’t. So I do it here, in the safety of my own mind. I dream and plan for things that will never happen, for nights that will never come. When can I come home again? When can I become whole again?

I despise my surroundings. The constant uphill battle to find strength and hope for humanity is taking its toll on my soul. I hate that I have become so empty minded and bitter. Like the world has hardened me with disappointment and regret.

The sole shining brightness in my life is distant and often cold. I feel its warmth, but sometimes even it is not enough to sustain my thirst. My love has sustained me for so long. And I have relished in the joy of being in love. But I need more now. I need change. I need freedom. I am trapped in a world of unlimited time, and yet I have no place to go, no goals to accomplish. I have already accomplished them. I am independent. I have a job. I work when called upon, and uphold my end of society’s expectations.

How do you cure the human condition? Many would argue religion and god are the answer. Many more would argue that drugs and chemicals and alcohol and addiction are the answer; distractions from the ugliness of life itself. Many more still would argue that the true escape from life’s great mystery is to solve the mystery with science and knowledge and insight. I feel I have experienced all these to a certain point, to no avail. I have heard the teachings of religion, escaped my own mind with drugs, tried desperately to steel my mind with knowledge and wisdom. Each path has led to nothing. Is that where life leads? Nothingness? Are we all destined to end in a hole in the ground? Nothing more than a few kind words below our name on a slab of rock? Have we not labored and toiled and suffered through so much in human history to have a better understanding of our existence? And yet, we cling to ancient traditions. Boil down each and every word of evangelical text to a point of meaningless rhetoric. And we argue. God do we argue. For what? No one wins in the end. We finish a disagreement by agreeing to disagree. Whether it’s in a civilized fashion, or a spiteful one, most leave feeling generally the same about life.

My wish is that I could make a living being happy. I thought I found a lifestyle that would bring me happiness. It has brought me many good things. I have learned so much from so many people. Learned so much about myself and others. But it all brings me to this point. Why am I doing this? Why am I pushing so hard against myself to accomplish something so pointless? To pay a debt? To make my way? Cavemen made their way by fighting the wild and each other. To this day we still battle the forces of nature and attack and kill each other. The only thing, since the beginning of time, that has changed, is our clothes. We go about things in a different fashion than what was once deemed acceptable, but have we truly evolved? I think not. I think we’re no different than the Neanderthals of the beginning of mankind. Just a collection of cells overrating themselves.

Some days I wonder why I even bother. If I should just say fuck the world and do as I please? Forgo the pleasantries and niceties and take care of myself. Abandon caution and wisdom and take what I want and leave what I don’t need. Sometimes I hope the apocalypse does come in December, just so I can justify being reckless and foolhardy. What if it did come? I wonder if even then I would bother to struggle to survive. If my survival instincts truly would kick in. Or would I just roll over and enable the inevitable? Each seems just as likely. When the end came, I could just as easily realize what I wanted to abandon I now cling to. And I could give myself a valid excuse to indulge the urges of insanity and instability. Feed my madness and collapse into oblivion with the rest of the world. Either path, the universe would continue onward. Never slowing down or speeding up. A straight line towards its own destruction. One I imagine to be much more fantastic and volatile. And all the while an infinitesimal speck of life calls itself the top of the food chain, deems its planet the virtual center of the universe, and celebrates Snooki’s and Justin Biebers across the globe. Even as I write, I am feeding the machine. I am feeding the pop culture narcissism with a simple outlet of thoughts and feelings. No one cares about this. People do care, but what does it matter? What does it REALLY matter? Someone complimenting my writing skills doesn’t change the fact that I’m slowly dying a boring, incomprehensibly dull death. If there was a scale for the excitement of a person’s death, mine would be a 1, ranking just above a person literally trapped in a bubble their entire life. And I’ve got no excuse like immune system deficiency. I am free. I am healthy. I have every tool I need to do whatever I want. And still, I hesitate and bicker with myself. Weighing the pros and cons of an overall meaningless decision. Regardless of where I am, what I’m doing, and who I want to be, I WILL end up in the same place every other human being ends up.

We’re all just dead people who haven’t died yet. And if there is an afterlife, how much will it matter what we did in this world?

But my dilemma remains. What am I doing here? Not here as in this world. Here as in here. Paducah Kentucky, wasting the best years of my life doing something meaningless to the world. My friends, family, they miss me. I can sense they want me home, and I want to be with them. My coworkers and acquaintances couldn’t give two shits about me. Many I’m sure don’t even like me. But still I sit. Still I await phone calls that never come. I prepare for situations that never occur I dream and plan for things that will never happen, for nights that will never come.

Forgive the arcane entry, it’s late and I haven’t done a thing worth talking about in months. Do not mistake any of this for suicidal thoughts. It is not death I am craving, it is life. True, wholesome, meaningful life.