the things you didn't carry

it hit me while driving to work this morning on a friday. it's hit me before, i suppose, but it's surprising every single time. mornings before work were usually sad. i'd drive to elvis depressedly or sufjan stevens or waxahatchee or flatsound or teen suicide or normal state and mope and stare ahead at the blank canvas of a flat landscape dotted either by grey winter clouds or grey crumbling roads, and that would be my morning. and then my evening would be the same. leave work, drive, sad music, home, sad music, white carpet now grey from dust and so many spilled drinks i cant keep track. grey grey grey. everything.

i drove to work today happy. i listened to happy music, i smiled at one point. i've had mornings like this before, but in the last year they've become more common. they used to be relegated to days leading up to trips to far away locasles. now they're relegated to days. the evening before was wonderful, the weekend ahead will be wonderful, and the things i carry on my shoulders seem a bit lighter for once, less suffocating, less heavy. i drive to work with eyes focused not on the grey right in front of me of another cold, snowy day, but on the time when i will be done with work, on the time when i see her, on the time when we can hug and laugh and share in each other's lives. i don't really know this feeling, it feels like i am shedding 20 years of not having it. it's relearning a bike i did actually forget how to ride. it's relearning me, relearning life. i sang the last few lines to a song that played as i pulled into the parking lot at work. the falsetto i can't reach with my limited range spewed "you're stuck in my mind, all the time." nothing truer has been said.

excerpt like a promethean curse

a small chalkboard stand at work is, belatedly most times, adorned with a supposed 'inspirational' quote or idiom weekly. this blog has, at times, taken idioms and deconstructed them in purposely obtuse ways so as to have a pseudo-ironic, deprecatory posts. the stated goal, then, of each elucidation is different; the former, to inspire achievement - the latter, to inspire a sort of perfunctory chuckle or reflection on the silliness of the english language. in the end, however, both the black chalkboard and the white background result in the same foregone conclusion; nobody reads either, nobody is inspired by either, and all continue their slow march towards death.

promptly

one finds that there exists a whole host of communities dedicated to prompting writing by offering, free of charge, short sentences or paragraphs designed to then motivate a continuation of said sentence or paragraph, so as to then be a sort of sparkplug for a written piece of work. such prompts are often silly and absurd and designed not to necessarily invoke the next great novel, but instead get the so-called creative juices going. given, however, most, if not all, prompts routinely deal in the realm of fiction writing, and not, say, trite, poorly irreverent blogging, it stands to reason that nobody finds sparking the kind of writing that exists in this blog as worthy of anyone's time. what that means for the reader who maintains consumption of hereto blog, is, of course, even more despondent.

you found someone who found you

if your body is a temple or a home or a vehicle or or or… does anyone know? you never treated your body as anything more than a hindrance, a casually exploited vessel that held so many of your insecurities. you never found yourself. your friends would dye their hair or pick their own clothes or get a cool new haircut and all you've known is ridicule. almost 30 and still your mom criticizes your hair, your stomach, your clothes, every single facet of your body is her's to pass judgement on and always has been. your friends would do the same, the clothes you didn't pick out lambasted and your paltry, scrawny, young looking frame a target verbally and physically. lately you found someone you found yourself with. you feel like you can do the things to the temple you never have. your color is different, you try things, some might not work but the learning has to occur. you show her clothes you try on and it's hard and anxiety inducing at first when you see someone else besides her standing there, but you know that she is not your mother, not waiting for a chance to pounce at something not looking good enough - to her you will always look good enough.  it took someone else to make you feel like you had command over yourself. might sound just like a guy, sound like a romcom, sound like a cliché, sound like a weakness, sound like a subplot, sound like growth, what other people think it is doesn't matter. just like what you do to the temple. it's a gift you will never look back upon.

ny/ny (new year new you)

you know it wasn't like, a really long streak or anything, but for several new years there you combined xanax and alcohol until you collapsed onto your bed and that was it. your last new years you didn't and that was good, and then this one you didn't either (there were other things). you were very happy this time. happy when midnight hit, happy in the leadup to it, happy all the next day, happy about a 2019 that you thought could build on 2018. you used to not make resolutions because you knew you'd fail. now you're smarter. it isn't even about whether you 'fail' or not. you are here and you are home and you are in love. resolutions are just another possibility.