I actually wrote this two nights ago....�The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched�they must be felt with the heart.�
-Hellen Keller
I feel as though my heart is too empty to feel anything but the utter fear that grips it daily. Some morning I wake up and prepare myself for the routine ahead, other meanings I lie and bask in the fear that grapples with my mind. Most of the time I simply succumb to it, pushing it into what feels like an empty black hole in my heart. Perhaps it is pulled into the depths of darkness erased from existence. Perhaps it lies waiting to strike at me in a moment of happiness, like evil waits to lash out at goodness. I wish that I could surrender myself to ignorant youth, but I gave up my youth in pursuit of something better. Instead I found misery. I laugh when I write this because my life is hardly as miserable as it sounds. In fact, life for me is a picnic. I don�t bathe myself in darkness and unhappiness. Instead I feel myself surrounded in perpetual shallowness. I consider myself not a prisoner of this shallowness, but instead a follower. The fear of facing a new day overcomes me, but what exactly do I fear? It is precisely this question that haunts me, for one cannot overcome a fear without know what he is to fight.
I guess one of my most harrowing fears in life is turning into my mother. Every day I become a step closer to living out this fear�a step closer to unending unhappiness. To become what and who she is would be to live out my own personal hell. How can anyone be so unhappy with the human race? How can anyone be so unsatisfied with life and yet make no effort to change it? How can anyone be so disgusted with her own flesh and blood? Perhaps I am shaded behind the cloak of youth�a curtain of naivete, but what life is worth living if all one does is wallow in how life has wrong you? Maybe I want something more out of life than it will give. I do not presume to pretend to know what I want out of life, but I do know what I don�t want.
If I were to die today, I�d look back on my life with, not disgust, but simply boredom. I�d be lying if I said that life was unexciting. It is just simply hollow inside. My life is like a beautiful hollow statue. Outside it shines brilliantly and as people walk by, the stare in awe. As time goes on, however, the statue becomes a little less shiny and brilliant and instead starts to decay. People start to only glance at it now, walking away without a thought, returning to their busy lives. What will happen when the outer shell fades completely away and people are too busy for even a simple glance? It will remain. Exposed to the cruel elements, no long beautiful, just a simple emptiness where great dreams once reigned. It will remain, nonetheless, unnurturned and forgotten.
What would people say about me if I died today? Would they say that I was once beautiful? Would they say that I used to make them laugh? Would they shake their heads in sadness and say, �What a shame?� Maybe such things would be said, but again people would be swallowed up into their everlastingly busy lives. I wouldn�t want the world to stop when I died, but I�d want everyone to have a separate piece of me. I�d want each person who knew me to have their own piece that I never shared with anyone else. They could trade stories at my wake and laugh at all the fond memories or even remember that I did something meaningful for them; I helped them in some way that impacted their lives. Helping people get on the right track seems to make life worth living, but lastly I have been so selfish. I have been absorbed by the materialism of today�s world, or rather, did I absorb the materialism?
I have been so absorbed that I never noticed aspects about people that I should have. I don�t think I�ve ever taken time to �smell the roses.� My whole life has been a straight line; I�ve never really defected from the path set before me. I have always followed the rules. When I was younger I wanted to grow up with such a passion that I strived to rush through ever day waiting in what seemed to be agony for the magical age in which I would feel free. Throughout all of rushing, I never realized that my freedom was slipping away as I became a slave to the world of money and the need for success.
Never again will I feel the utter freedom of playing a childhood game without the worries of money, jobs, success, or grades. I wish that I could swear off the conventional world like some people and live a life that seems meaningful, but I cannot swear off the hand that feeds me. Sadly enough, money does make the world go round and to me the only safe zone is some sort of middle ground. Where that middle ground falls for me, I still don�t know. I don�t expect to have all the answers at nineteen. I don�t want to have all the answers. Knowledge is power and too much power corrupts. I don�t want to be burdened with knowing everything; there would be no point to life without learning.
A couple of days ago a friend asked me (after I asked him, of course) what my favorite things in life are. Of course, I was put on the spot, so I wasn�t sure how to answer. I completely forgot to mention laughter. Laughter fills me up, it makes me forget or maybe ignore that black emptiness in my heart. Friends are also of the utmost importance to me for they are who make my life worth living. I consider writing more of a passion than a thing (though my friends aren�t things either). Writing gives me a chance to release all of the chaos that rubles through my head. It allows the insides of my shell to flow out momentarily�if only for just a sentence.
I�d really like to simplify my life. I used to relish the drama, the �soap-operaness� of it all, but now all it does is cause me additional pain. I grow weary at the thought of another conflict, but ironically conflict is all around me in life. Alas, I am in eternal conflict with myself. Until I grow mature enough to let go of my painful past and tendencies to cause myself pain, I have no choice but to endure the daily drama.
I guess that�s what this is then.
A daily dose of drama.
J
