There’s a reason why we don’t linger by the edge. There’s intrinsic sense in keeping your head down, your body wrapped tight within the crowd. There are more long miles of cold black nothingness out there than there are ways of facing them down. The darkness creeps in from every angle, and it’s always those at the edge of the herd that get dragged ( Read more... )

I feel saturated with my own disillusionment, soaked from head to toe with the oily runoff of melted dreams; spilling out of popped balloons and pooling like blood at my feet. I feel drained and empty, running on fumes of distant hopes, no longer capable of entertaining private fantasies of completeness, no longer willing to believe in the romantic ( Read more... )

The nameless void has resurfaced, looming large and menacing over me, casting out its heavy shadow across the otherwise uninteresting facets of my life. Its presence is foreign to me; I somehow managed, at a young and tender age, to bury that threat beneath an avalanche of logical positivism. But the diviner’s sage upended twenty-two years of ( Read more... )

I call them Beautiful Empties. They are everywhere, turning heads. They float like butterflies on the breeze; oblivious, careless, and without a thought. Their laughter comes quickly, their smiles never fade; they live in a perpetual state of excitement, and can barely speak fast enough to convey it. They talk on and on without meaning, as if ( Read more... )

I want to feel optimistic about the future, but it’s hard these days. New battles are always waiting just over the horizon. I watch them as they approach. I face them down, one by one. I struggle-not gracefully, by any standard, but I always make it through. I’m a survivor, if nothing else. I can do enough to get by ( Read more... )

Fatigue can be beautiful sometimes. The heaviness can be soft and inviting, smoothing out your wrinkles as it tugs at your limbs. The days run you inside-out, and the weeks are marred by their passing preoccupations, but the nights make everything worth it. Almost anything can be justified in those precious few minutes before sleep overtakes you- ( Read more... )

You were smiling when I left this morning. I tried to imagine what you were dreaming about, that could open up that secret smile-the one that bubbles up from somewhere deep inside you every time I catch you staring. And I knew that when I asked you this evening, you would shake your head and tell me that you couldn’t remember, even if you could ( Read more... )

Alright, fine, I'll admit it. I'm not unhappy. I kind of like where I am right now, and I kind of like who I am right now, and I love the people in my life, and I still live each day without regrets. But you have to understand; I’m in love with my bitterness. It’s the quiet voice that makes me laugh at my misfortune. It’s the churning acid that ( Read more... )

I like finding the very edge of my willingness to work. I like to examine it, to justify it, to use it in unflattering comparison with the motivation that others seem to find so easy. I congratulate myself on maintaining a conservative balance of priorities while simultaneously longing for the willpower to do otherwise. I secretly wish that I cared ( Read more... )

Ah, Failure! I know thee better than thy know thyself. Resignation, Fatigue! My old friends, my common bedfellows, my cherished and too-familiar faces. It’s truly been too long. Come and warm yourself by my fading glow. Come drink of my modest hopes, come taste of my newly-tender flesh. Bittersweet are old reunions, but I can see now that the ( Read more... )