you missed it

you hear people complain about obligations to friends and you get it. it's pressuring. a wedding you can't afford to go to. a game night or movie night you really can't make. saying no. making time for yourself. and it takes work and upkeep. but you missed it. you remember in washington dc with a good friend years ago, your first time out and socializing in years and years. two women approached and the four of you flirted and laughed and got drunk and ate 2am jumbo slice pizza. it was a highlight amongst a trip full of sights and museums and skyscrapers. you missed it. you missed late night drives to lansing with your mcdonalds coworkers to crash a msu party your friend was going to, and even though you didn't drink with your friends, you all laughed and talked and played rock band.

on saturday you slept in with your fiancée then went shopping and got some cool things and took it easy. you cuddled and napped. at night you had friendsgiving and ate way too much mexican food, then you all went to your place and got drunk and high and laughed so much it hurt.

you missed it. you missed relationships before you even had them, and you missed friendship after you had said goodbye to it for good. now you have both and you could never ever go back. even the commitment, the work, the cleaning the place up, the cleaning yourself up, the driving, whatever, it's all worth it, when before the laughter and drinks and food and too much money spent, there was just you, on a friday or saturday or sunday night, deciding how much xanax should go with how much alcohol, eying the blade on your nightstand, wondering why you couldn't be put out of your own misery. you had that past and it was awful. you're no social butterfly. but maybe you've spread your wings a bit. that's all that can really be asked.

turkey

it's always bad. always! it's like clockwork, because it happens every year. every year, some shitty jokes or comments, questions, you try to keep your head down at the table, just quietly eat the turkey. you've come back anxious and upset after your uncle told his wife to get over almost being raped and learn to work with the guy, even when home alone with him, where the first attempt happened.

nothing absolves them. but this time you had a thigh to place a hand on, someone to laugh and sing with on the way back home. no matter what was said at dinner, nobody could take that away. she was there for you the whole time. and you've never loved her more.

were wrong/are right

'This constant reminder of how wrong I’ve been'

in class you sit and stew and realize you were wrong, again. that all things you are bad at are just all things, the few things you thought you maybe, might be good at it, you are bad at, too. you can't really write. in 7th grade eric marveled at you doing long division in your head. like, hard long division, in seconds. dividing 16437 into 2348912 and remembering each decimal as you went through tenths... hundredths... thousandths. you had the lowest score on your team in the state competition because you changed an answer you knew was wrong because you couldn't have gotten it right, to a different answer. the first one was the correct one. you played yourself. your mother doesn't realize how well off she is because she enclaves her self in those who have more. you were never gifted. don't think you were. a good ACT score is money.

you can no longer do that division in your head.

your brain is a constant source of telling you that you were wrong. even when it turned out ok. you were wrong to protest your parents sending you abroad because you had fun and grew and learned and found something to hang your hat on. maybe you were wrong to protest them. maybe that's the point. and it reduces and reduces into it's not you were wrong but you are wrong. the books you read were trash, the grades you got were trash, the way you kept your room was trash, until all things that are built or consumed by you were trash and that renders you what, exactly?

you will hurt people. it is unavoidable. everyone does. and yet the way in which you can hurt people seems worse. for the longest time you viewed yourself unfixable, and so why put anyone through your existence? you got better and yet, cruelly, that just gives you more room to hurt. isolation is not an answer. living in fear is not an answer. it's an incubator that warms and warms you until you incinerate into ash and leave a messy form on a mattress that hasn't been changed out in 15 years.

every mistake is a potential mark, a potential heartbreak. you keep a running total in your head of how you've fucked up. of hands on shoulders, of faked signatures, of high school grades, of your fiancée coming home to a knife next to you, edge unmarred by blood, thankfully, still a few years clean of that one.

you told her earlier that day the one time you knew you were right. you were wrong to get there, that's the irony; your parents dragged you kicking and screaming, but in a moment of clarity, standing there, sun setting over the pacific ocean on a warm evening, you realized this was right. this was right. you are scared and constantly reminded of being wrong because you can't let those get in the way. you were wrong, again. wrong about love, about a future, about happiness. you have them now. even with the knife there, the pills upstairs, the tears shed, the pain you caused, the lack of power, the fear, everything, and how you wonder if you'll ever be good enough for you or your family, how you hope to god that you can hold on to her forever, you realize that this was the result. no, not what you did that night, but holding her, lying down next to her, being there, and you drill into your brain to never do this again, because just like the sunset over the ocean, you wouldn't want to tarnish anything about this for the world. this time, you're right.

Copycat

A cursory examination of many institutions reveals a sort of demonstrated copycat functionality when one particular formula achieves success. A team wins the Super Bowl or World Series, and immediately, other teams embark on copying the winning team's blueprint. A campaign successfully gets a seemingly small odd challenger elected, and suddenly, we are inundated with attempts to be the most Trumpian.

Alas, this pernicious and insincere form of flattery likely - nay, certainly - leaves on consummate popular pop poet Robert Frost if, such a thing were possible, rolling in his grave. For his most famous poem - an elucidation of taking the road less traveled by - is, the second it is written, an immediate refutation of itself. How many times are we told to not follow the crowd, to be cool by not being cool, to be different, be ourselves. In a more macro sense, no industry perhaps better displays this than that of travel, in which some moderately well off yuppies "discover" a developing, formerly colonized country, extoll its virtues of limited western values and industrial domination, only to, in turn, bring upon it the very forces that will lead to that.

Indeed, one can imagine that, in Frost's supposed yellow wood, metaphor or not, the success of the poem quickly lead both paths to be equally well worn and documented. Given the impending nature of the rapid and seemingly unstoppable forces of global warming we have unleashed, in part upon our constant consumption of the very thing that we use to lead us down said road, a 21st century amendment to the clause might read that one who takes neither road has found that to make all the difference. Until, of course, we are all stationary, staring down a path, unable to make up a decision on which way to go.

it's too easy to be nothing

it's too easy to listen to music that makes you feel and makes you live and realize you'll never, ever create something like that. never bare your soul in a way that moves other people or makes them desperate to cling to what you do. is there a point? fame of any kind is fickle and full of traps and anxiety. you'll never write something like the books you read. never direct a galaxy far, far away. maybe you'll live with the small stuff. you go to a party with your scar laden arms bare and your shoulders bare in an outfit you'd never wear before, not because you didn't want to, but because you felt safe with the person you were with to do so. and even the touching; the hand petting, the nose poking, the flirting, the lap dance propositions, the loud noise and crowds of people. they're uncomfortable but you're there with her and have that. but is it what you want? you're torn because you know you have to commit to being out there, you still need friends, contacts, people to shoot the shit with, but why be here when you could be home? there are kisses and cuddles and quiet and safety. there's a place where you could maybe find some time to do what you want, your hobbies, the things you've written about you've still abandoned, like the occasional album or video game or book. but it feels different, it feels you still. you're finally you. dyed black hair and dainty clothing and all. you don't know. you never know. you won't create, you won't have a novel, a short story, an album, you won't have the time you once had, perhaps ever again, to sit down and lose yourself in The Elder Scrolls, or Final Fantasy, or listen to a bunch of albums in one weekend and really digest them, to power through an entire book in one evening. but maybe you'll have the degree, eventually. maybe you'll have the confidence to wear what you want, when you want, to tell people 'no' for the first time. she helps a lot with that. because you never thought you'd be in love, or safe at home, or happy about your future. all things are impermanent. you've given up bits and pieces of yourself to find others. you leave the halloween party holding hands, tired. you learned about yourself from it. maybe you don't need to create a book or an album. maybe you don't need to fix the world. maybe you don't need to be there for your family 24/7. maybe an occasional trip, a goal to return to a corner of the world you love, the occasional binge of some show or video game or book, some music exploration while at your computer, maybe that will be enough. because she tells you that you are good enough, whatever you are. and if you can learn to accept that, then the rest will fall into place.