Thank You

It was one of the last warm days of the year I could remember. I was standing there alone even though so many others surrounded me. We were all waiting.

I was dressed finely that day, unusually proper for those who uphold the low standards of my generation. Though my feet were tired, they were elevated in a distinctive elegance beneath such dark attire.

The cool yet deceiving wind ran it's fingers through my long hair. Caught in its grasp I remembered it's newly acquired length for which four years prior did not know of.

Upon it's arrival, the sudden and collective wave of movement rose among us. I adjusted my bag after a deep sigh for what impending monotony awaited. Before I could move an inch I heard a voice call my name.

Rotating slowly as not to seem anxious, he walked by.

The deception calmed though the wind still wrapped itself around us. Mutually pleased to find each other, I felt the first genuine smile emerge from many months of retirement. The wind whipped a long strand of hair across my face. Reaching up to comb it away I greeted your presence more elated than I should have.

Our conversation was brief but reverberated in my ears for many hours.
Your selective acknowledgment of me could not have been more pleasing. Your wardrobe could not have been anymore tasteful.

It is strange how years will seep away unnoticed, worthless and empty but mere threads of reality capture hearts and reserve memory.

I Should Have Stayed

Before I left you looked into my eyes
Held me close
Grazed my lips with yours
Couldn’t let go
Time was short
And you told me if I didn’t leave
You were going to keep me.

I wake up and am in an unfamiliar room alone, far from your arms, far from the mountain I once lived on. It is dark and I don’t want to ask the question of how I got here, because it would be to remember how it was I lost you. The clock reads too early to rise and too late to count on feeling rested. The sheets are now cold from the sweat of my nightmares, unlike the sweat from our bodies once before and how that dream soaked through layers of earth and left your scent on everything and anything you touched, including me.

In my misery I excel. I only know how to be mediocre in my contentment, if I am lucky enough to stumble upon it. For what is contentment rather than being ignorantly satisfied with the haphazard surroundings of meaninglessness that to one attributes their life? Again, my ability to revel in this sty of mediocrity, the way swine marvel at the satisfaction of their mud and filth, is nothing but that: mediocre.

Excelling in the intensity of each end of the conscious spectrum of vivacious existence is sometimes too frightening a self actualization to reflect upon. For sometimes I am just too tired to step outside on the doorstep and into insanity when I could easily crawl back into bed and avoid the folly and fervor that my existence has come to. Yet this resort back to mediocrity is just a temporary relief from the stabbing pains of consciousness and never really results in an absolute. The stink of the sty that commonplace humanity is can only be tolerated for so long before vomiting need be induced (Thank you Mr. Pessoa). In a moment of egocentricity or intellectual snobbery (as the fellow camaraderie of the sty would say), I look down and realize it is too filthy a place in which to let my boots get muddy. I turn my back and greet the door step. Instead of a genuine desire to embrace my nature as a bipedal being of acute consciousness and extreme veracity, I set forth not in this light but in repulsion so toxic, I hasten to get as far away from this place for as long as I can.

Ultimately these escape plans are drawn up on account of losing my ability to suffer. Those who live in a constant state of mediocrity never feel the blister of ice or the burn of the sun on their skin for they are too dumbfounded to recognize these intensities – they instead feel nothing at all. All my life, even since I was a small girl I have been drawn to suffering as some girls are drawn to the convent. Suffering, (which I shall expand upon later in definition) like Descartes’ ability to doubt, proves the existence of the self as through suffering we know we are alive as there must be something there to suffer. Feeling oneself alive therefore infringes a sort of masochistic meaning upon the act of suffering: I am drawn to it; I cling to it like a shiny coin, a glimmer of light to give my existence meaning.

Perhaps this is the answer to my questioning for why I constantly pursue that which makes me suffer and the satisfaction gained from such pursuit. I constantly refuse to live my life in a mediocre fashion, letting each day pass unnoticed in sedated apathy and instead would drive a knife into my own side just to feel life and this desire for instant sadistic self-gratification. After so many scars I know no other way of existing. At least suffering, though not as accommodating as bliss, is better than feeling nothing at all.