My So-Called Life X: Questioning

So what is it all boiling down to? Am I happy, or am I sad? Am I smart, or am I an idiot? Am I loved, or am I not? Am I loving, or am I cold? Am I handsome, or am I ugly? Am I fat, or am I average? Annoying, approachable. Angry, calm. Fighting, mediating. At peace, at calamity. Up, down. Social, autistic. Proficient, inadequate.

I profess. I am sad. I fooled you into thinking I was happy, didn’t I?

Everyday it’s on and off the train while I watch the country pass through the windows. It’s the same graffiti every day that I see. Leaves are turning brown but I’m too stale to pay attention. Man with a baby carriage. What a scene. Something I would care a lot less about if it weren’t for the loud noises of construction and blinding spotlights. Or listening to the cracking of my petrified heart – which is far louder, by the way.

I put that Esthero CD back on my music feeder again. It’s been a while. Somehow the same feeling doesn’t leave. It’s one of those few things that don’t change with my emotions. It made Toronto look a lot more beautiful and refreshing than it is in reality. It’s just a rotting pile of garbage on top of a bunch of grey clouds and rancid rain. I guess I don’t love this country as much as I did a year ago. Put Sarah Slean again but that lost its feeling 6 years ago. It still feel stale to me.

Exams brush by, not happy with any of them. No longer confident, but I say nothing. Angry at myself, but I’m dumbfounded with reality. There’s nothing to talk about anymore. I can sit in front of this keyboard and type absolutely nothing. Too sour for studying, too bland for games. The year’s not progressing very well. Family, “friends”, your muse and love – all interwoven into a knit choker around your neck as it gets tighter every day. It’s been an uneventful day, I’d say. Guess you should pray you can still breathe. Some people have their brains pop out of their heads because of how tight it gets. Wonder how long it takes for a vulture to finish a gourmet brain on its own.

I see spirits at night. I see those angry faces, the angry voices, those cries for help and my grandmother’s spirit, telling me if she could make it through, I sure as hell can do it too. Sure I’ll make it, but will I really be happy about it? Were you? Sleep is getting difficult. I feel the cold breathe against my neck and the whispering of the wistfully. Am I dying? I can’t tell. I might as well be. I’ve become so tired and I’ve only lived for twenty years. Mom asked if I wanted a big birthday party for my 21st. I was wondering if I honestly would make it then.

“Why is my life so difficult”, I remember a friend saying. I guess I find it difficult too for someone who has it pretty good to say that. But I’ve got it pretty good too, right? Surely I’m ungrateful for living in such a beautiful house and someone who loves me, I think. Surely we both have terrible lives, as with everyone else. But terrible is a relative term for “good”. Those who starve when they were born don’t have a word on this spectrum – we just know they’ve been reborn in hell.

I imagined what the great cities of Toronto would look like if you wiped every human from it. So empty, so lonely. At least that disgusting clash of synthetic machines and gaudy “difficult” lives, which is so-called “music”, would shut up already. I wonder if I’d be alive long enough to walk every inch of such a tainted city. I wonder how dark it would become.

Cigarette smoke. I hate this smell, but I smell it again. It’s been crowded in this already crowded world. I just want a bit of breathing space and reciprocated fidelity. I’m so tired of being unhappy, but at the same time so tired of being deceived and toyed with. I’ve been a doll – or maybe an action figure sans its heroic connotations – for all my years of life, and I beg that one day I’ll be my own doll made of worn vinyl and washed-out colours. This toy is no fun anymore.

Love made me motivated. Now it’s gone, yet it’s not. Or maybe I’m spending too much expecting I’ll get something back for it, like I’ll be rewarded for my deeds with a pat on my back and probably a hug. Whatever it is, it’s not working anymore, and I’m silently ebbing away like I’ve always been.

Find me an ocean, vast with kelp and colourful fish. Put a stake through it. It’s my graveyard in my REM sleep.