After Burn

"So tell me, how much of metaphors do I need to stitch in poetry for my heart break to sound beautiful."  - Pranita Rimal

When you give up on trying to fall asleep and get back out of bed to discover that is only 1:30AM. I want so desperately to fast forward through this day. I don’t want to see anyone or speak to anyone or do anything. I just want it to be over. I want so much to be over. I want to have something to move onto. I want to feel something else. I want to stop talking non-stop in my head to someone that isn’t listening. 

I can never tell if I’ve pushed people away or if they have just peace’d out of their own accord. It’s probably a steady mix of the both.

"It’s like when someone says, ‘How are you?’ Do you say, ‘Well, my head hurts and I’m lonely and depressed and I’m worried about everything and the world is collapsing and full of evil’? Or do you say, ‘I’m fine’?" - Sara Shepard, The Visibles

There are a lot of beard ointments and oils and treatments on the market these days. Most of them are pretty expensive, so I’ve hesitated buying or using such products. I use my regular face wash and about once or twice a week I use my conditioner on my beard too. But I have had a plethora of Bed, Bath & Beyond gift cards left over from wedding gifts – which BTW we’re just four days away from what would have been my second wedding anniversary, FUN**WANTTOSLEEPTHROUGHITSOIDONTSPENDANENTIREDAYWANTINTODIE** – so I splurged and bought some beard conditioner cream recently. Haven’t noticed any difference yet in softness but what it has done is make the beard seem even more red than usual, which I can be insecure about. I’ve always wished my beard matched the color of hair on my head (which is an ever graying brown). And my goatee area has two very big patches of white. I would actually prefer more white sprinkled throughout. Of course it wouldn’t be salt & pepper per se, but rathe...

Thought I was having a bad/hard day. Lots of heavy things in the world right now putting it all into perspective for me. I'm here. I'm alive. T hought I was having a hard day. But I was having an inconvenient day, a nuisance of a day. Not the same thing. I know what hard days are. What bad days are like. Today was not one for me personally. That's worth remembering. Have to resist the temptation to get too wrapped up in every little thing that isn't working out for me. Gotta save my strength for the bigger things both in my life and outwardly in the world.

"I am not happy. I am not unhappy. I am frozen somewhere in the middle that is so much worse. I am nowhere. Nothing is happening and I am getting more and more sad." - Samantha Schutz, I Don’t Want To Be Crazy I am terrified at just how miserable I am when I take it all in. I have to block some of it out to just get by day to day. It won't take much of a win to get the ball going in the other direction, but it is so tiring waiting and working for a win that just doesn't seem to be coming.

I don't hate the outside world. I really don't. There are things in the world that I hate, but I don't hate the world. I hate that you are not in my world and I am not in your world. I hate that the happiest of moments in my world are not as good as they could be with you. I hate that I am missing out on whatever is going on in your world whether it be Happy, Sad, Good, or Bad. I hate that you might actually want me in your world again, but not in the way I want to be. And I hate that I can't change how I feel or that I can't even imagine ever feeling differently. I hate that I ever held back, even a little. And I really hate where I held back a lot. I hate that I ran out of chances. Ran out time. I hate that I gave in so easily. I hate writing this knowing you will never read it. I don't hate you. I love that I don't hate you. I love that I haven't stopped loving you. I don't want to know what not loving you anymore feels like. I love ...

"I do not want to have you to fill the empty parts of me. I want to be full on my own I want to be so complete I could light a whole city and then I want to have you cause the two of us combined could set it on fire."  - Rupi Kaur

When people say “life is short” I have no fucking clue what they are talking about. Life is short? You mean cosmically speaking? Life feels interminably long. Even when it is moving by fast. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe on my death bed I’ll look back on all the years and think it went by too quickly. But I can’t imagine that. Not today. Not while feeling the immense weight of how painfully long this living has become.

Why Love? Every single day something terrible, life-altering, soul-crushing is happening to you or someone you care about. We answer with anger, fear, judgement or indifference because those are easier to process. But they do not heal. The comfort they provide is fleeting. When I speak of love I do not speak of a cure all or magical potion. I speak of the action of love, which is an ever changing and evolving apparatus that is not easy to wield. We let petty things destroy us. We give power to our weakness. We are hypocrites and fools. Nothing good will ever come out of this, except love. Our darkest and most damning days can still lead us to love. I can not answer what is love, or how to love. I can not tell you when love will find you, or when you will find the love you need. But I feel like I understand why. Even if I can only express my answer with some flowery language. (Originally written 5/11/2016)

I have spent too much money this week on wants instead of saving for needs, which is not a new development by any means, but it has been interesting that I have mostly been spending money on buying used books and new underwear.  Used Books & New Underwear  could actually be the title of my memoirs. 

Something has perplexed me my entire life is how many friends my father has. And how social and involved his friends are in his life despite him being such a generally unpleasant and anti-social person. He’s not without some charm, but my best guess is that he is just a totally different person with other people than he is with his family. I’ve certainly seen how that is true throughout my life. And I’ve always wondered if his friends know that. Or if they even care. I’ve never had a lot of friends and have never had an easy time making new friends. It has long been a fascination of mine, this difference between us. Perhaps to an outward observer it doesn’t appear the same as it does to me. I don’t know. And I don’t mean to imply that my father is some sort of miserable monster of a man. Although that does describe my father’s father pretty accurately, and again at his funeral there were far many more friends of his there than I could’ve ever imagined. My late brother also had the ...

Note to self: just let sleeping trolls lie…put it out of your mind and move on. You don’t even know this person and they don’t know you. Maybe they are just having a bad day, coming from a bad place and made a bad decision. Maybe they are just a very stupid, small-minded person happy living a miserable, pessimistic life. Don’t make no difference to me,

I don’t know what was in the water or the air today, but after weeks and months of little to no activity on the job search front I now have two in-person interviews scheduled for next week, with one phone interview also scheduled, and one more in-person interview possible. I needed this momentum in a very big way. Today marks one full year since I moved out of the home I shared with my wife and our two cats and traveled north 5 hours back into Central Texas to move back in with my parents. I have only been employed for six weeks total between two temporary jobs during that span. I have not been back once to see the cats or home I miss. And I have only seen my now ex-wife in person once during the last year. It has been a tough year. The toughest, probably, when accounting for other horrible things in the world. A lost year, too, in many ways. And while I can not speak with any authority or confidence about what lays ahead of me I can only hope & pray that something good is on t...

Yeah, I’m definitely the guy who calls back immediately and leaves a message at both office phone numbers and your cell when you have contacted me about a possible job, especially when the office is in a neighborhood that I love and would be so happy to move back into if I were also working there.

You tell yourself that next time you are not going to take it for granted, not going to make the same mistakes. Next time you're going to do it right. But there isn't going to be a next time.

I totally forgot that last Friday marked 6 years since I last smoked a cigarette or cigar. I still miss cigars occasionally, but I have not been tempted to take up smoking again. Nor have I been seriously tempted to start drinking again or doing any of the other bad things I used to do regularly. I don’t think I give myself enough credit for that. It’s something.  If my often depressed state makes someone think I just don’t care about myself or don’t want to have happiness in my life then why have I remained sober & clean throughout the hardest past year I’ve ever experienced? I have a lot of steam that needs letting off, but I am trying to do it the healthy way. It would be so easy to just go on a bender or start up that daily ritual of self-medicating.  I’d rather live with this rawness than with the numbness. Although it’s a very fine line between the two.

I have a new Silver 128GB iPhone 7 coming in a few days. Will be quite the upgrade over my 5c which has easily been my least favorite iPhone since I made the switch from Blackberry to Apple in 2010. Of course Apple would really have to shit the bed in a major way for me to ever consider going Samsung/Android. It’s not that I am so loyal to Apple, just hate that alternative.  Might have a job interview this week at the nearest Starbucks location. I am not a coffee drinker, and haven’t been the most regular visitor of Starbucks, but I am very eager and willing to learn. I’ve heard mostly good things about working them and I just really need the job. Depending on the job situation I might be taking a road trip at the end of the Month to Kentucky for my great Uncle’s funeral. Haven’t been to my mom’s home state in a long time. My mom is already taking my cousin and her almost 5 month old daughter with her on the trip. Might just be too crowded and chaotic for me. I’d rather visit ...

In a post-Trump actually fucking became President world I shouldn’t be surprised that there is backlash against the statement: “If your baby is going to die, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make.” 

One of those days/nights where it feels like the Universe is having quite the laugh at your expense.