The Perks of Being an Extrovert

Today I came to the sudden, happy realization that my life is meaningless, and became overjoyed by the notion that I don’t have to be happy.I’ve been trying to put my actions, thoughts, dreams—life—into some sort of perspective: a desperate attempt to live beyond myself and imbue my solitary existence with meaning. I have finally found comfort, however, in the thought that my entire life can be meaningful by being meaningless. I—my entire life—have been reduced to an expansive relative existence within a context of everything and everyone around me; this world is just a mindless organism; everything in existence is an organic machine; every human is merely a furnace. The mechanisms of these living machinations continue to function whether I burn brightly or dully; life will persevere regardless of my ability or inability to produce heat or light. The pressure of a meaningful individual existence has disappeared: I’m okay with being an animal, a part of the living organism of LIfe, part of the indelible story of humanity, a simple member of our animalistic collective soul. I no longer feel the anxieties attached to the need to contribute to self: can merely hoard accreted meaning and matter. When I die, this meaning and matter will be released into the atmosphere, and the machinations of people, Earth, everything, will simply march on.
The result of this realization is this: I am completely content living a life of misery, because even in that existence, I am not affecting people, but still contributing to the story of Humanity. After all, what is happiness without an understanding of sorrow? I am part of a giant narrative that needs heroes, villains, and static characters. I can be a miserable, static character in The Grand Story. And knowing that makes me happy.

Break the seal—
MINT CONDITION!
Play with me, handle me: use me.
I am an object, waiting to be loved, waiting to judge, waiting to love.
Waiting.
There is no more casing: the shield is gone.
My heart: battered, mistreated, overly used.
It is bare before men.
Wait.

Every once and a while, when I’m lonely, I wish I had been born straight.
More than every once and a while, I wish I didn’t think so much.
But then, I realize I’m beautiful because I’m crazy; I’m beautiful because I’m gay.

I should never forget that.

Slowly drip from my hand to my elbow, from my elbow to my shoulder, and down my chest.
Become a part of me: share my warmth.
I will spread you into my skin: surround myself with you until I cannot forget you.
But you need to let me pierce you:
bleed on me.

It’s an illusion to me, a paradox of massive proportions.
I stridently stride, and yet that doesn’t change that I don’t know who I am or what that entails.
“JUST BE CONFIDENT.”
As if it were that easy. Give me a break (whoever “me” is…); I’ve got a prickly sea of delicate issues: bold, ready to collapse. Even if I were to assess what I am and “just go with that,” and “just be confident,” I would still be in the same position, because I hate almost everything that I can figure out about myself.
Get into my brain and tell me I’m sane; then you can tell me to “just be confident.”
But you if you did, you wouldn’t, because in my mind you would find yourself losing touch of what “confidence” is or means, entails or creates: not because it’s not there, but because “confidence” has screwed me over more times than I can count.

Make my world silent;
make me appreciate the warmth of my beating heart.
Snow on me:
coat my hair with far off lands;
dust my clothes with your fleeting touch.
And if I let you stay:
soak my skin, live in my bones, occupy every fiber of my body, my outfit;
leave me pink and rosy.
Freeze the Earth;
stop all growth.
Leave me inside looking out; remind me of fraughtless youth.
Snow on me;
caress me with cold.
I want to lose sensation.

When was the last time you stayed up so long that you saw the sun rising;
the last time someone told you that you should be so much better;
the last time you ran to the bathroom so no one would see you cry;
the last time you smoked a cigarette alone at 4am;
the last time you stayed in your room for three days straight;
the last time you laid in bed, awake, just worrying;
when was the last time someone asked you how you were doing, and you had to answer “terribly”;
the last time you had to take medication just to be;
when was the last time you bled inside,
felt dead inside;
when was the last time you were me?

I have found out who I am and am confident in that.
I gave up looking for love and he landed in my lap.
He likes me for what I am: for me, and even likes what I don’t about myself.
So, of course, I act like a bitch (to say the least) and now, he won’t talk to me.
It was so trivial, so small; one day it might have been love;
why did I let out the lion, instead of the dove?
I had someone who cared for me and liked me.
He was mean, but so was I.
I’m not at fault, but the one who retaliates is the one who is punished.
Now I will lose him, and it’s definitely my fault.
I took a risk investing in someone less confident than I, and it was for naught.
And it’s definitely…maybe? my fault.
Or his?
Whatever.
I just want someone to like me.

The wind is cold, overpowering.
The trees creak like rotting houses;
the stalks of brush dance frantically:
my thoughts torrential, the rain approaches.
Dash myself against the dirt, my one equal.
And yet, even dirt provides a home to the most beautiful life, to all the creatures;
how can I say I am worth that much?
My tears feed the earth simultaneously with the rain,
to bear fruit and flowers when spring comes again.

My life feels like a giant pillow:
mushy, tattered, overfull, stained, used, worn.
It just sits under me, cushions my head
from all the hardness of the world around me.
I need the cold of a steely surface,
but there it is: blocking, stifling, smothering.
I punch, I throw, I bite, I smash,
I scream until my voice gives out.
Nothing happens, because no one hears
through the thick, musty, dingy, dusty
battered pillow that it is my life.
The only thing to do
is sleep.