Sunday, April 15, 2012

i'm afraid that this complacency is something i can't shake

sometimes i'm afraid of happiness. when i feel it coming on i run back to hide behind the familiar skirts of sadness. i throw myself onto my bed and curl up under a quilt of depression. it's comfortable there. i know my way around even when it's dark and sight comes from my fingertips.

sometimes when i think i may be happy, i get angry instead. i stomp and rage and throw things. it's madness, but there's a method to it. my method. i can do what i want, when i want. it will all end when i decide it is time for it to. i'm in control even when control seems as far away as the moon.

my words come to me freely in the dark. they come when all my tears are spent and i need something more to spill over. they come when i'm trying not to peek under the bed, afraid of the monster's eyes i'll find staring back at me. they come when i'm pushing on my bruises and sucking on my aching teeth. phrases fly from my fingers when there are no more slippers within reach, when the clattering spoons lay silent in the sink, when there's an ink stain on the wall and a pile of pens on the floor.

they don't like to weather the glaring sunshine of happiness, float in the languid nothingness of content. i drag them out forcefully from between my smiling teeth, lay them bare on paper where they wither and die premature deaths. i search aimlessly for meanings that no longer exist, put fancy clothes on beggars and try to pass them off as royalty. it doesn't take long for them to desert me then. it's in the second before the last one leaves when the panic sets in. like a soldier thrown weaponless into the middle of a war, an addict who doesn't know where to get her next hit, a body slipping under the surface as water fills its lungs. 

and i run back to the familiar, too afraid to find out what the alternative might be. 

*Be My Escape - Relient K

3 comments:

  1. anonymous hippopotamusApril 15, 2012 at 2:47 PM

    very powerful. you should publish a book of short whatever this is called. prose? while you're working on a best selling novel ;)

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  2. i'm a little disappointed with this one, actually. i think i just skimmed what i wanted to write and the emotions i wanted to include and instead went off on a tangent and stayed there. i did, however, have plans a couple of years back to self-publish a book of short prose and prosetry for charity, and though all i had left to do was upload it to one of the online publishing places, i never got around to it. and i scoff at the best selling novel. i wish.

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  3. Anonymous hippopotamusApril 16, 2012 at 6:44 PM

    I believe that you have a best seller in you...you just don't have the time. and yallah publish the short prose

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