Or, The Things Left Unsaid

For a minute I was truly, deeply in love.  At least, insofar as one can experience anything, I experienced it.  So, anything that’s said here - well, you won’t understand it when I say the next few words.

I really wish I could forget what did - or did not - happen.

(more…)

Look around,
We’re living with the lost and found
Just when you feel you’ve almost drowned
You find yourself on solid ground
And you believe there’s good in everybody’s heart
Keep it safe and sound
With hope you can do your part
To turn a life around

I cannot believe my eyes
Is the world finally growing wise?
‘Cause it seems to me some kind of harmony
Is on the rise…
-Penny, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog

News!

First - the Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog soundtrack is out on iTunes.  Why haven’t you bought it?  You know I did.

Second - I just got home from my first day of training to be Springfield’s newest public defender.  My right foot hurts like a bitch from the drive.  My brain is fried from only having four hours of sleep and having driven a collective four hours in order to get to and from said training (and of course the whole day of training itself).

And I’m loving it.

There were rousing speeches.  There were funny stories.  There was a wonderful documentary where good triumphed over evil.  And just as I was leaving…

Trainer: I’ve heard very nice things about you.  I’ll be expecting good things.
Me: Sheesh, first day on the job and I’ve got a reputation?

Tomorrow the apartment shall be complete.  And, I am glad to report, I am fully back to form.  Which is great, because in a few short days I start my work as Springfield’s newest public defense attorney!

But we’re not here to talk about my job.  We’re here to talk about… well, nothing really.  You just sit there quietly reading and I’ll just go piss off then.  I don’t really have all that much to talk about, unless it is to expound on the beauty of my 42 inch high def.  Which is beautiful.

Two trains leave my brain at 7:50 pm, traveling at the speed of thought in opposite directions.  When will the circles in my mind cause the trains to crash?

I really wish the move were over with, and I still have another box to fill up.  The problem is this box is the “random stuff I didn’t put into other boxes” box, which means it’s going to be… ugly.  I’m just glad I’m not the one who has to load and unload all of this shit.

I really wish I were staying in Boston, but not for any reason that would require me to stay in Boston.  I wish the summer would go on forever, I wish I didn’t have to take up the mantle of responsibility, I wish…

I’m physically tired and there’s more work to do.  I have to get up and do it - which isn’t too hard, because there’s nothing to do in my apartment anymore.  My cable has been disconnected, my DVD player has been packed away, my DVD’s are somewhere in a box next to me.  I have a stack of books I have yet to put in a box I just remembered, but I have to put them in a box and I think I’ve read them all.

I’m mentally fatigued, because I keep thinking about a fantasy that I recognize on one level just isn’t real.  It’s an aberrant manifest and I haven’t had one of those in a long time.  I wish I could stay and I wish I could do better and I wish that I wouldn’t have to put on the mask and not care.  But the apathy comes easy, the cold comes quickly.

I want the move to be over and done with and I want to not care and I want to stay and I want the dream to have been real.  If reality is simply a collection of perceptions, why can I not just convince myself that it was real?  I don’t think I have any data to the contrary, and yet… nothing.  Nothing.

I just don’t know anymore.  My world is once more torn asunder, and I can only retreat within.  I leave tomorrow and even though I might be back in two, three, five years, I know that it will never be the same because that chapter is closed, and I wish it weren’t closed.  I extend my mind’s eye in the future and I see no reason, no path that takes me anywhere near that.

No, there is one.

But I fear traveling there, for I don’t think I have the strength.

I was thinking last night and today (see, a lot of packing doesn’t leave a lot of room to do much more than sing and think) that maybe the whole point is loss - to lose and lose well that which you have gained. To onace again put down that which you were given, to freely give it up and to take up the mask and cloak once more and become… more. And less.

It’s easy to not care… so long as you don’t care. Right now I care - and that’s the difficult part, the part that I find impossible to let go of. What drives me forward is that I see so much potential… so much hope… and what I need to do is to shun that. To say that life isn’t for me. That doorway is closed. That I am beyond that point of help.

Before it was speculation - there was no choice implied, it was merely the way that life had driven its path. The well was dry because there was a desert. Now the tides have come and the monsoons have showered us with much water, and life goes on. But I struggle. I can’t drink deep from that well, as much as I might long to drink.

The waters came when I first doubted… when I turned my mind’s eye into the future and saw naught but the wastelands. The rain fell and I knew hope… but perhaps falsely. Perhaps my mind’s eye was correct, and the rain merely an illusion. Merely a ghostly temptation, to be tossed away. Endured.

And yet I think of that and a part of me wants to die. To put that aside is to kill a part of my humanity. Can I do my job if I no longer care about persons? Will I be able to function, and for how long?

The mask beckons, promising relief from the shadow of hope. To meld with the shadows and become a candle in the darkness. But the darkness always wins. Only burning stars endure in the darkness. And I fear I’ve not enough fuel for a fire of that kind.

Tomorrow will come and with it the soothing numbness of the cold void.  With every passing second the memory of the hope fades into the darkness, until nothing but the faintest scars remain, and she will be nothing but a figment.  You won’t remember what you thought you saw, you won’t think of the strength and potential that made you admire her so, her smile will be but an echo in the past.  You will go on, you will endure, and you will grow once more into the shadows.  You will grow cold once more and nothing shall touch you, for all eternity, you shall be forever cold.

You will be a monster in human guise because you never thought of doing more.  Because you couldn’t think of doing more.  The numbers didn’t add up - the strategies failed.  Time ran its course and you ran out of time and you were never sure if she was anything more than a diversion.  And whether you succeeded or failed, at the end of the day all that will matter is that once you were a man, and that man fell for something greater than himself, and he knew hope he shouldn’t have ever tasted.  And that man will die and be born again, a shadow of a ghost, once more.