I Will Tell Gary

There is no God, and all of this is meaningless.
But today, there is a God. And he had a plan for him.

Talking shit, drinking wine, eating good food, laughing about other people's flaws and silly things we see on TV, sharing information about ourselves, wearing tank tops and slippers and hair down, cussing, speaking freely, all in a small, neat, artsy apartment in Cedar Park. I am so different from:

Sitting on the edge of the seat, never saying a word, taking shit from people who used to be my friends, gazing across the pavement at a circle of friends who I'm too scared to say hi to, staring down at my Triscuits and apple slices and milk boxes, picking up my ugly lunchbox when the bell rings, dragging myself to Theology or Physics or Coach L's English class, back before what happened. So different from:

Skipping lunch to spend an hour with a nun, working on homework, crunching numbers with the school freaks, avoiding eye contact in halls, too scared to heat up popcorn, sitting in silence with two new friends and a boy who does nothing but read, him asking you to prom in the hallway, and you ask him why.

I'm never the same person. My body decays every year, but my personality is growing up. As it grows, it doesn't decay like the flesh. It flourishes. It chips away at small parts that fear rejection and acceptance, it clumps on bits of humor and assurance. I feel okay more often than I did when I was young. I don't remember growing up very well because I was very anxious or okay I think. I was either so okay that it is unmemorable, or I was hurt so I forgot. It bothers me to not know which is the case. But the problem with where I was a few years ago:

You were staying in your bubble. Going to a foreign land and seeing devastation with those people doesn't help. I want you to feel uncomfortable, to crawl out of your skin and scream and cry and tear your hair to pieces in anxiety and loss of security. I want your heart to give out for a minute, your feet to free fall down a path, and I want you to stop where life takes you. You want so badly to change the world, but I fear you never will. The world, first of all, doesn't like change. The first obstacle. The second is that your idea for change is painful. I do not want to listen to your books, to your fantasies, to your arbitrary morality. Here is what I want to do: try some X, go to a rave, trip my tits off, and sleep til 5pm. Tell me why I shouldn't, once. Tell me why it's a sin, who I'm hurting. And what happens next? I do what I want. You're right at my ear to whisper sweet somethings, how I'll be forgiven. I don't want mercy. If I have done wrong by some Almighty power, then I am responsible for it. I knowingly do what I do. I drink, I smoke, I take drugs, I fool around with guys, I cuss, I do what I want, come home at 3 am, and I know that I do it. So don't tell me your God will forgive me. I never asked, and I don't want it. I am not sorry for living my life. What an odd concept to tell people, that they'll be forgiven. To tell people that they can love, but this way or that way only? I tried for 9 years to be holy. I guess I'm just a natural born sinner. I'm not cut out for religion. It doesn't bother me now that I've stepped outside the one-way window. So I want to change the world. I want to raise some people to be good, to not hurt others if they can help it, to survive and thrive and continue the lineage to make the world a nicer place. I won't make them pray, but I'll teach them how. I won't get mad if they don't want to go to church, but I'll take them to anywhere they wanna go. I'm going to change the world in this way. It's called hope, blank slates, magna carta, simple soft heads with plates unattached. But what are you going to do? Dress them up on Sundays, make them be like you? You're assuming that you are right and that you have the truth. You want to truth? First, you need to let go of that desire. Truth comes to the clean-hearted, not those with contracted hearts. Let that go, and you can get closer. Your God won't help, and your religion REALLY won't. But these are my current beliefs.

So the world is highly fucked up and constantly complicated. Every moment in a catch 22. Put your belief in predestination, and you will not think so. But now I am a part of the world, for the first time. I kept myself locked away. Now, I'm here. I love it, with its horrid gossip and ruthless bloodlust and the tears and the medicines and the mistakes. I love it more than religion, more than God, more than my past. I'm done with that. I'm free now, for the first time in my life. It is lovely.