Chords Save, Nooses Hang

Daniel Cowman.

Sometimes writing is my only comfort. Writing, and the dim future ahead. Those before us tackle our time right now, in their hands they make it so short and busy. We are made to worry through our youth, regret through our adulthood. The only fleeting goodness is found when we are too innocent to understand. Terrible, sour paradox. Childhood is drunkenness. It's heroin, optimal dosages flowing eternally through a brand new heart. It's sweet like cocaine dripping down the back of your nasal passage, you never need uppers to not fall asleep, and even if you did, there wouldn't be a need. The world treats you well, strangers smile at you just because you are small and good. Growing up has been a solitary experience. No one can save or help you. No one can ease your pain. You are alone, parallel to everyone else on the planet but nonetheless never to touch.

Huddling under a desk with my dog. She's shaking. She's small and not full of cancer yet. I'm small and always quiet, always careful to speak because I know what happens when sounds fly. Doors break, anger bubbles just below the surface of every action the three of them do. Me, I'm my own island. An only child, an orphan. Oddly forgotten in the haze. I was forgotten. I was dragged to different states, shoved into a school I didn't want to go to, lectured, prayed to, because of someone else's choices. I'm getting better at coming to terms with it, but it was pretty lame. I feel much, much better these days. For the first time in my entire life, I feel stable. But even stability feels shaky. I'm always worried about the next morning: who will I wake up as? I've been okay for a while now, but I am unconsciously caught in a cycle of insanity. I need nights spent yelling at passing strangers, I need flowing blood on the carpet, I need dizziness and visions of nothing, leading nowhere. I need dead end weeks. Then something pulls me up, reminds me of what I have to do. Nonetheless, I am so alone. When I cry out for companionship, I yearn for solitude. I can rarely spent more than an hour with someone until they bore me. With the exception of my close friends.

But who gives a shit? While the world moves about and finds its pretty passions and callings, I'm just sitting here, hacking away at my cracked keyboard, replaying the same songs I listened to the day before all to create something hideous that I can be proud of. My life, my childhood. All mediocre. Nothing interesting. But I wrap it in these dumb, no-thought languages so maybe it can appeal to me. Who am I kidding? I am stably fucked up, comfortably insane. You can all kiss my well-put-together ass. I am a piece of blank, a blank shot in your temple, trigger pulled by your own mother. That's me. The "just kidding." I wake up, load myself into the chamber. I'm ready to be shoved into your parietal lobes, frontal cortex, that grey matter that makes you human. I'll tear that to confetti, spill it on the floor at your soon-useless feet. Rigor mortis. Betrayal when you see who holds me. I can look as threatening as I want, make you sweat and count blessings until the last second, but in the end I'm a farce.

I'm tired of learning and I'm tired of sitting. I need something completely new to devote my life to. But that happens every few months. Go to college, Run away. Do drugs. Get straight A's. Join a band. Live in your car. Get a job. Dye your hair. I can never choose anything, so I choose everything.