I.

I am everything I sought to hate. The street that I am walking down, the job I keep, the dull faces I meet. The slow pace, the way homeless people need more help than I can provide. I tried so hard to be altruistic, worked my young life to the core to give back. Yet no matter how many times I empty my cup I must selfishly fill it. I get this feeling that we’re all going to die and meaning will cease to exist. You’d think if I had the capacity to feel this I would feel numb, comfortable that nothing matters… I wish that were the case, I care. I fucking care, an empath, a narcissist. I believed when I was nine I’d save the world… Anyway, the windows I stare at while walking through Fort Wood are empty, I never see the people in them or outside of them. One time I met a woman named Nancy and her dog Bo. Bo was a delight, a basset hound; Tail wagging, voice booming, No cares, just scratches and sitting.

Nancy was a bitch. She referred to her guest house as where the “help” used to stay. Ridiculous, who says the fucking help nowadays, I shortened my conversation with her and stepped away. Today is a day that I say I don’t care where it goes but it’s the day I say that I care the most. I can’t handle my emotions and the will I impress into this life. I have been broke since I was six, I have been depressed since then too. My mom’s bipolar and it’s no surprise I suffer from afflictions and mania, trauma in trauma out, trauma in trauma out. My brain is flighty. I probably suffer from adhd but I am so sick of pills being shoved down everyone’s throat I’ve convinced myself they wouldn’t help me.

I am a self-prescribed bad bitch, walking back to my apartment with my puppy Ary, she’s my light. My partner’s my light. I am a shadow, All black jeans, hoodies, you name it. Grunge bands, rap tees, silver jewelry. Hair that rests softly over my left eye, hiding enough of my face that no one can get a read on me without work. I am an enigma, spirited, alive and dead. Rebirthed each day to suffer, experience joy, and impress optimism into a society that wants nothing to do with it. We’re all dead inside, I think we’re in a mass psychosis. I can’t be sure though because I am deeply entrenched in it like the rest of us. Desensitizing gun violence, a lack of priority, no direct local or individual community. We are doomed to dream and hollow our bodies to let cyborg-ship ensue. 

For an Optimist I sound pretty pessimistic right? Well that’s what happens with a fallen angel. Choking on the halos these christians gave me when I was too young to understand what they meant. That Jesus would come and save us all. Well my willingness to change the world never ceased. When I was a teenager, I thought I could save the world or that the Gorillaz album dropping would sway the tide and save us all from tyranny. There is no saving us, there is no everything will be entrenched in light. The catholic church casts a shadow, larger for-profit non-profit charities working tax loopholes, like illegal sex workers flying under the radar with snapchat nudes. This existence is shit. All that is light is dark, and all that is dark is light. The acceptance of duality helps me cope with this desolate space. 

The world didn’t save me, it only taught me that chaos and order thrive in the same world. Our world has to have one with the other, the madness stems from my paranoia, depression, and general fatigue of what this life is. Overload, saturated, populated. The voices never stop: who are you? What do you want to be? Achieve? Why the fuck haven’t you started posting TikToks? It's a free promo. I smoke for my health, without it my brother says I’m more of an asshole. To that I say of fucking course. This world is enough to turn the purest to Flint. This life is disgusting and to be of good conscience is to play with insanity. Because the audacity it takes to maintain a good attitude takes a degree of ignorance I haven’t possessed possibly ever. 

Walking home, I can be such a bitch. Bad attitude, bleak look at life, but I love deeply. I love my partner, my puppy, my roommate Garrett who I laugh it all off with. I play music like the world has never seen, and they'll continue to look at some bullshit artist they found on their discover weekly, raking in streams to buy shit that doesn’t matter. I want money to change my family’s life, my mom is broke as fuck. I work to fix that, I share, I give, I receive. The cycle of life and death are in full effect here. I am walking down the hill, I close the black hinged gate to my apartments and walk down the pavement. At my door I take one last breath of the bitter cold, thank god I’m home.