“I’m tired of being in love and being all alone.”
I write to understand what happens inside of me. What lies within my heart. I’ve been alive for 26 years; it’s taken all of that time to discover the most basic understanding of my own self, my own thoughts, feelings, desires, and needs.
I feel on the horizon a great tidal wave coming, like the mountain-sized waves on the tsunami planet in Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar”. It’s a tidal wave of – what? Joy? Despair? Self-hatred? Suicidal thoughts? Love?
(This song I’ve been listening to all these long and dark days.)
“So Far Away” by Dire Straights, on Brothers in Arms
This is why I write. To uncover what comes next, and whether I can survive it.
The waves come rhythmically and periodically. They’re like the cycles of the moon; I can expect them every so often, and usually I’m not off by very much.
When the summer ends, deep in October because it remains warm and sunny in Southern California for a long while, my insides turn to ashes. Daylight savings arrives; we all roll the clocks backwards or forwards or whatever it is. A little time travel that we do for the sake of business or agricultural reasons or whatever.
When the time rolls back, I die a little more on the inside. My blue skies, my warm sun, they’re all over. It is dusk at 3 in the afternoon. Now the long night lies ahead, a night filled with wolves ready to tear me apart and eat me alive. Winter is very difficult. The holidays for the past five years have been ordeals. The stress and despair I feel at Christmas and when the New Year arrives is hard to describe; I feel I have begun every year for the past five years nearly broken, barely holding myself together.
I’m a delicate teacup, glued together with trembling hands so many times that you can get cut on a jagged shard if you pick me up the wrong way. Pour tea into me and it runs out of me; I cannot hold anything, cannot retain anything. I am useless and worthless and all I do is hurt everyone around me. Why haven’t I been thrown away yet? Why keep me?
At least, this is the flavor of the thoughts I have in deep winter. I wonder why my friends like me. I wonder what my coworkers see in me ; I was invited to a bar and a party the other day. Why?
Logically I know there must be some reason why I was invited. Maybe it was pity.
I think it’s near impossible for me to see, REALLY see reasons for other people to show me love or care. I feel beige, disposable, completely without value. My back is covered in acne; it hurts. I run my hands across it, feeling the constellations of blemishes. My face has acne scars on it. Beneath my eyes there are dark circles, soft flesh hanging in bags. Other people say I look very young. Countless times I am asked if I am still a teenager.
I feel like I am 1000 years old.
I feel so old, and so young, at the same time.
I feel very far away from my friends and family. So so far. I want badly to be close to the people I love. But I feel so fucking far away.
Where is God in all of this? Where is He in the Cedars of Lebanon?
Silence is what comes from Him. Silence is what comes from the world, from the human race.
I have a mouth and I must scream. I have no mouth and I must scream. I feel like my face is falling off. I feel ugly and deformed and unable to love.
This is deep deep deep depression, where the Wolves of Suicide dart around on the edge of every corner, howling their moon-song, tempting the ones who have lost their way towards their hungry mouths.
These are days of tsunami waves. I’m tired of living like this. Always I feel like I discover a new bottom when I have already reached the bottom of life.
In the spring my thoughts might change. In the summer there might be good days.
Good days with friends and family at bars, parties, together.
I must hold out for the good days. But are they worth it, when there are so many bad ones? Bad days where you do your best not to hurt yourself?
Everything must change.
This is no way of living.
But I still don’t know if I want to live or not.
I don’t even know if my life is worth living or not.
I just want to stop thinking for a while.
That’s why I’m writing this. To just, get away from my thoughts for a while. Or maybe, to release them as they keep on building up within me.
I know one thing to be real. That I love my family and friends, and that I don’t want to hurt them.
So, I’ve gotta keep going.
But I don’t know how.
Are you there God?
It’s me, Javi.
Can you tell me, is there a reason for all of this?
And where are you?
Where?
Where am I?
T H E Δ L I E N 