I can't go out no more.
There's a man by the door
in a raincoat
smoking a cigarette
i have such a complicated relationship with reality, which is why i spend so much time here, in the internet. when i venture forth into meatspace, i am so easily overwhelmed by the normalcy i perceive. sitting outside the school yesterday afternoon as other mommies and daddies gathered, even though i blend in well and you can't tell, i still felt this intense difference between myself and everyone else. times like these i am seized by this fierce wondering, this what if i had grown up when i was supposed to and led a responsible existence, what if i had settled into the world as opposed to flipping and twisting and thrashing through it as if i'd been washed ashore here, drowning in this unfamiliar atmosphere, what if i'd behaved like i was born here and belonged?
the difference isn't visible to the ordinary eye but i am not feeling it with my eyes, i sense it in the deepest layer of my skin. and i sit quietly wearing my awareness thinking wondering what it would be like not knowing what i know, not having gone where i have and not now being someone who is from where i've been.
i wonder if they appreciate the quality of their stress. i wonder if they realize how luxurious it is, having ordinary middleclass problems. i wonder if they have any idea, any at all. and why should they? and why do my thoughts take this tone? there is no unfairness here between us, we are merely the results of our different decisions.
and can't help it this is the sort of thought process that brings the litany of regrets rolling like credits across my perspective. doesn't obscure anything that isn't indistinct already in my watery eyes, but serious selfpity is never about the vision, is it? it isn't. and in this case, the introspection concludes with a few words from one of the more bitter aspects of my self, spoken in a voice one might mistake for reason: this is not unfairness. you had your chances, you made your choices, your life is your own ... here the reason ends, and the abuse begins, which makes this as good a place as any to stop all this whining, doesn't it? it does.
* * * * * * *
what a lot of words that was, when all i really had to say was this: i have reclusive tendencies, because i am weird and i have many issues and complexes as a result.
