Mornings are time for specificity and organization. Everything must happen a specific way to set the tone for the day. As light slowly begins to fill my room, I wake up, instantly reaching for the gadgets that anchor me to society. I turn every alarm off, everything meant to startle me into the waking world in the event my brain lusts after slumber a little too long. I try to roll out of bed slowly so I don't wake my roommate, unaware of whether or not I am successful. Teeth. Jeans. Brush hair. Contacts. Thick swipe of black eyeliner. Books thrown into a tote bag or a backpack, depending on my outfit and I'm out the door.
On a good day, I can accomplish all of this in fifteen minutes flat. I go to the nearest dining hall for breakfast and sit in a cozy diner style booth with my laptop open. I have to have Orange Juice first, then some kind of food, then coffee. Then more coffee. And my ten minute cups time me through the morning until I am forced to get on with my day and go to my first class, something I often times dread, preferring to sit and write for hours on end in my little booth.
Ritual dictates my days and my weeks. Without a clear idea or schedule I would be lost. I am perpetually following a script for my life. On good weeks, this schedule is perfect and represents exactly what I want. On bad weeks, I throw it all out. I skip class, I miss appointments and I fall off the face of the earth. I want to disappear, so I do. Fuck schedules. Fuck classes. Fuck requirements...
In my head, I've always thought of my tendency to do that as "going to the darkness". No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight. Although I am convinced my morning ritual is what keeps me sane, I know that it only keeps me alive. Sanity is something very distant, something I aspire to. I will be sane when I no longer fade to darkness or when I no longer need silly ritual just to get me to class or to make sure that I get up in the morning.
Although once I try to spill words onto a page, my words become unstable and harder to maneuver into perfection, in my head everything is stuffed with imagination. Intense thought spews out and tries to escape from my tightly shut chest. Everything in my heart and head is under lock and key and I have always operated under the assumption that someone else possessed the key that could pry me open and force me to be rid of my emotional hang ups. It's either that, or I have to accept the fact that I have the potential to fix myself, but some mysterious force makes me incompetent and unable to do so. I am holding my breath until I am asphyxiated, waiting for some unknown variable to complete the insolvable equation of my despair.
Every inhale is followed by a sharp exhale: realization. Some breakthrough that liberates me from this expectation that someone else needs to help fix me. But once I breathe out, releasing all the tension from my suffocation, once I discover satisfaction, I need to breathe in again and feel the taboo pleasures of being asphyxiated through my own willpower. My breakthrough is diffused and I am right back where I started, gasping for air.
Three shots in. Too much for my head but just enough for my heart. A quiet evening morphs into something with potential before vodka and seltzer has time to catch me up to what is happening. An arm around my shoulder. My head rests on a rib cage, making direct contact with the source his rhythmic breathing. Of course there are words, which come so easily when you've had a bit to drink and you are no longer afraid of showing that you are human. Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too... But everything ends. The infinite is a construction beyond human comprehension; although some moments should last forever, they are so mostly prematurely terminated. Soon, I begin to realize that the words coming out of my mouth are too much. The thoughts running through my head are too much for me to handle... You left me in the dark. Everything is happening too fast for me to process.
I make a hasty escape to my cave of sobriety and lie in my bed thinking more than I should. The unknown has broken through my careful guards against emotion. My daily rituals are insignificant in keeping me sane in a world of the unexpected. Perfection in the morning is so much harder to keep up with at night. During the daytime with the protection of rituals, when emotions or thoughts become too much I can run away. This is supposed to prevent me from "fading to darkness" too easily. I do everything in my power to prevent the trigger of depressive thoughts. I do everything to protect myself.
In the safety of my bed, I realize that I am not protecting myself, but punishing myself. I don't want to feel because I think I don't deserve it. In reality, I want to feel someone else's heartbeat next to mine, a soothing repetition, letting me know "you are not alone" with each pulse. My feelings always become more complex than just wanting to have someone to keep me company at night. I am always the one who thinks more, feels more and loves more, whether or not I express that to the outside world.
I refuse to constantly put myself in the position of being the feeler, the thinker or the lover. I possess an inability to control the intensity of my emotion. Not being in control terrifies me. No matter how nice and sweet some boy might seem, given a week and a half of me believing them to be different. I can peel away their layers of kindness and destroy my illusions of difference faster than most. No, I don't think all guys are assholes, but I think I can provoke people into revealing the negative aspects of their personality.
The only thing I can control is my negativity, but even that seems like such a burden. Have I ever pondered what would happen if I did let go emotionally. What if I actually let someone know that I could feel? What if I showed someone my emotions to someone?
What am I so scared of?
I fear commitment, wanting too much commitment, unhappiness, too much happiness, and so many other things. If I am too happy, then what I view as an inevitable fall from this joy will hurt even more. I am concerned that each time something bad happens to me, it will be harder for me to bounce back in one piece. I imagine myself crumbling at an accelerated rate as it becomes more difficult to rebound from disappointment.
But I can't let this negativity dominate my thoughts. I know that I will never be happy if I view everything as an opportunity for failure rather than an opportunity for something amazing. My main problem is reconciling how I should feel with how I do feel. It's something everyone faces to some extent; I am not alone in this. And dear reader, you aren't either.
On a good day, I can accomplish all of this in fifteen minutes flat. I go to the nearest dining hall for breakfast and sit in a cozy diner style booth with my laptop open. I have to have Orange Juice first, then some kind of food, then coffee. Then more coffee. And my ten minute cups time me through the morning until I am forced to get on with my day and go to my first class, something I often times dread, preferring to sit and write for hours on end in my little booth.
Ritual dictates my days and my weeks. Without a clear idea or schedule I would be lost. I am perpetually following a script for my life. On good weeks, this schedule is perfect and represents exactly what I want. On bad weeks, I throw it all out. I skip class, I miss appointments and I fall off the face of the earth. I want to disappear, so I do. Fuck schedules. Fuck classes. Fuck requirements...
In my head, I've always thought of my tendency to do that as "going to the darkness". No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight. Although I am convinced my morning ritual is what keeps me sane, I know that it only keeps me alive. Sanity is something very distant, something I aspire to. I will be sane when I no longer fade to darkness or when I no longer need silly ritual just to get me to class or to make sure that I get up in the morning.
Although once I try to spill words onto a page, my words become unstable and harder to maneuver into perfection, in my head everything is stuffed with imagination. Intense thought spews out and tries to escape from my tightly shut chest. Everything in my heart and head is under lock and key and I have always operated under the assumption that someone else possessed the key that could pry me open and force me to be rid of my emotional hang ups. It's either that, or I have to accept the fact that I have the potential to fix myself, but some mysterious force makes me incompetent and unable to do so. I am holding my breath until I am asphyxiated, waiting for some unknown variable to complete the insolvable equation of my despair.
Every inhale is followed by a sharp exhale: realization. Some breakthrough that liberates me from this expectation that someone else needs to help fix me. But once I breathe out, releasing all the tension from my suffocation, once I discover satisfaction, I need to breathe in again and feel the taboo pleasures of being asphyxiated through my own willpower. My breakthrough is diffused and I am right back where I started, gasping for air.
Three shots in. Too much for my head but just enough for my heart. A quiet evening morphs into something with potential before vodka and seltzer has time to catch me up to what is happening. An arm around my shoulder. My head rests on a rib cage, making direct contact with the source his rhythmic breathing. Of course there are words, which come so easily when you've had a bit to drink and you are no longer afraid of showing that you are human. Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too... But everything ends. The infinite is a construction beyond human comprehension; although some moments should last forever, they are so mostly prematurely terminated. Soon, I begin to realize that the words coming out of my mouth are too much. The thoughts running through my head are too much for me to handle... You left me in the dark. Everything is happening too fast for me to process.
I make a hasty escape to my cave of sobriety and lie in my bed thinking more than I should. The unknown has broken through my careful guards against emotion. My daily rituals are insignificant in keeping me sane in a world of the unexpected. Perfection in the morning is so much harder to keep up with at night. During the daytime with the protection of rituals, when emotions or thoughts become too much I can run away. This is supposed to prevent me from "fading to darkness" too easily. I do everything in my power to prevent the trigger of depressive thoughts. I do everything to protect myself.
In the safety of my bed, I realize that I am not protecting myself, but punishing myself. I don't want to feel because I think I don't deserve it. In reality, I want to feel someone else's heartbeat next to mine, a soothing repetition, letting me know "you are not alone" with each pulse. My feelings always become more complex than just wanting to have someone to keep me company at night. I am always the one who thinks more, feels more and loves more, whether or not I express that to the outside world.
I refuse to constantly put myself in the position of being the feeler, the thinker or the lover. I possess an inability to control the intensity of my emotion. Not being in control terrifies me. No matter how nice and sweet some boy might seem, given a week and a half of me believing them to be different. I can peel away their layers of kindness and destroy my illusions of difference faster than most. No, I don't think all guys are assholes, but I think I can provoke people into revealing the negative aspects of their personality.
The only thing I can control is my negativity, but even that seems like such a burden. Have I ever pondered what would happen if I did let go emotionally. What if I actually let someone know that I could feel? What if I showed someone my emotions to someone?
What am I so scared of?
I fear commitment, wanting too much commitment, unhappiness, too much happiness, and so many other things. If I am too happy, then what I view as an inevitable fall from this joy will hurt even more. I am concerned that each time something bad happens to me, it will be harder for me to bounce back in one piece. I imagine myself crumbling at an accelerated rate as it becomes more difficult to rebound from disappointment.
But I can't let this negativity dominate my thoughts. I know that I will never be happy if I view everything as an opportunity for failure rather than an opportunity for something amazing. My main problem is reconciling how I should feel with how I do feel. It's something everyone faces to some extent; I am not alone in this. And dear reader, you aren't either.
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