Ballad of Big Nothing (I Don't Go Where I'm Supposed To Go)

Day 22. I've been working on a "project". JK, it's basically an ongoing stream of consciousness that has been going on for 3 days now. I'll post it in segments because it's too long, and also neverending. Literally, until I stop thinking.

Can the world get any brighter, shinier, clearer? I’d like to shed some light into the dark cracks and crevasses where shadows lie. I tried to make a playlist of the saddest songs I know, none seemed sad enough. I guess that’s okay. Ashlee, I miss you. Not physically though. No, I miss the comfort of you in my head, the solid book that you were, whatever you were to me, I miss the certainty. I see someone who looks like you from the back at school sometimes. It scares me. I don’t want to see what her face looks like. I’m thirsty. I just woke up from my cocoon, I’m not a butterfly yet though. Not yet. But I’m always thirsty when I wake up, maybe the air in my room is too dry. I’ve got that feeling coming back to me again. I felt its presence so strongly last night, I wanted to tell it to go away; instead I cried. I cried ‘cause the monsters were back. By morning they’ve disappeared again, but they left an aftertaste. I’d like to listen to a life changing song. I haven’t heard one in a while. I’d like to listen to a song that makes me fly, or one that explains some unknown, hidden part of my life to me. Sometimes I want to write that song. I wonder why word doesn’t automatically capitalize my ‘I’s. I wonder how I can change this. I wonder how I can change a lot of things, like

It’s funny that I paused right there. There are so many things I want to change that the thought of listing them is overwhelming, I have to leave it blank. I did think of my room though, what can I change in my room. Nothing, I don’t think. I’d like to live on my own, maybe, but as soon as that thought enters my mind I know it’s the wrong thought. I doubt my ability to make it on my own. I’ve had confidence before; I’ve felt ready to move away, to start over, to build my own life not the life I was born into. But I’ve been doubted by all the adults in my life, my grandmother, my aunt, my dad. What are you going to eat, they ask. You’ll get sick of Kraft Dinner and ramen noodles. I guess they’re saying that because they’re not actually thinking that I’ll move out soon. I’m scared that if I move nothing will change. A while ago, and by that I mean years ago, the truth hit me that it’s not my geographic location that makes me miserable. It’s me. It’s my own self doubt, my own insecurities. I’m trying really hard to fight them all. I’m trying really hard not to be depressed, trying really hard to make something of myself, to live, to become a person, a real person, alive, alive. I’m trying to connect with other real live people. It’s interesting I guess. Everything is an experience. I’ve met lots of people, I don’t think I know them very well. I don’t think they know me, I don’t know how to let people get to know me. I’m trying to not be layered. I’m trying, I guess, to just be simple, be simply me, whoever that is. I’m trying to do things on impulse, whatever the first thought that comes to mind is, I’ll do it ‘cause I want to be natural. I don’t want to lie about myself anymore. I want a lot of things, so many things. I don’t want to pretend. Whatever I am, I am! I’ll just be. I’ll chase whatever runs in front of me. It’s hard to connect with people when you try to be yourself because so many people are not themselves. I guess I’ll have to finish this later. It’s funny that the life in my brain gets interrupted by the life of someone else. The home I’ve built in my brain is strange but so comfortable, hostile and poisonous but safe, oh so very safe.

“I love the logic of oxymorons and how paradox helps us not to feel insane.” - Stephen Dunn.

Hasn’t this proved to be so true. Who could ever live here but me. Those who come knocking will eventually leave. I’ll build extra rooms for them, clean rooms with new sheets and a fridge. They can come and go as they please, they can trample through my room to get to their room, my poisonous room. They can set up there, and I realize that even on the inside of my brain, I’m on the outside. I would give up my brain for someone else to live inside.

I love these moods, these in between moods, where everything flows in a straight line, or wades, or floats like dandelion fluff through the air, through my brain, slowly so I can catch it the first time around. It’s moods like this that allow me to do anything, to fully realize the potential of all moments, like in movies when they slow everything down so you can understand. The moments don’t last forever, but moods like this remind me that I can make them. I can make my own moments. I just want to sit with someone and smile. Sit and smile. I want peace within myself, I mean, I want to stop waging war with whatever I have. It’s only me right now. The place I occupy in my brain, the rooms I rent out, they’re empty now. Only the cobwebs of my thoughts, white and meaningless, remain. There is me and my mirror, a truth teller, hard to look at. I’ve left a room open for you, for you, person who has a place on the inside of my brain but not yet on the outside of my life. There is a place for you.

I want to empty the contents of my heart. I want to pour out the letters that alone mean nothing, and put together in certain ways can create words that make sense. Words that explain something, anything. I love being in love. I love shifting over in my brain, making room for someone else to settle down for a while. I don’t think they’ll ever stay, but I try to be good, not hazardous, not intruding, not overbearing, not the terrible things I can become when I’m so close to what I want. But it can be such a good feeling. I love to feel so passionately about something, anything, someone, somebody, just anybody, another real person who will invite me into their brain. I would like to understand somebody completely. That is a very hard thing to do. I find that people are often looking for the same thing as I am, but there is a lot of miscommunication, I’m always looking beyond, there must be something better because I don’t understand this person. This person is not comfortable. No, I have not met a lot of comfortable people. They are harsh, crisp, they taste like winter. I’d like to open my heart, empty the books I’ve written in there, perfect words will just lie there in someone’s hands, and their hands will open and the words will fall out. Or my books will make a new home in someone else’s heart. I would like to write something beautiful. I wonder if I have already, somewhere. I’d like to tell the truth. I’ve become but a ghost, a shadow, an outline of the person I thought I might be. I never knew what to expect of myself, I don’t know who I’ve become but it is someone. For some reason I always thought doorstoppers were foolproof. I didn’t realize they wouldn’t withstand a hard pushed door, multiple times. Sometimes that happens, the wood peels away. The things we meant to happen just don’t turn into anything, we fall flat on our face. The door knob goes through the wall. That was ages ago, wasn’t it Ashlee. Weren’t you the one I did it for. I can never hope for things so ridiculous although it has become almost impossible not to. I’ve held on to an unwavering bright light of hope that

I don’t know what. I don’t know what I’m hoping for, but it’s something good. I’m hoping that there’s a bed for me at home, someone warm to curl up next to, stairs to walk down in the morning and a lot of sunlight outside, a bus that comes on time, and then places, I hope there are places I can go. I hope I have some place to go, some place to return to, a space in time in the crowded world that is just for me. I can get lost in the space in my brain. The static electricity, the lights turning on and off by themselves, the laughter in other rooms right next door. Sometimes my neighbours are quiet and I don’t know which is worse, the lonely silence or the knowledge that happiness is right beside me, separated only by the walls I built myself. Painstakingly I have built those walls, carefully, stone by stone or brick with my metaphorical hands. It’s all a metaphor in my brain but it’s a clutch. What I have left when people leave is the wall, keeping out no one, a wall that has served no purpose except to block my view. I am left to admire what I have built, while people outside laugh. They laugh because they don’t know what is behind the wall, nothing too interesting. It’s been there for too long to create questions anymore.


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"I'm so sick and tired of trying to change your mind
when it's so easy to disconnect mine
High times, yeah I feel fine
Don't pick me up, I'm fine right where I am
I don't go where I'm supposed to go."
Elliott Smith - "High Times"