You want to know the funny thing? The pathetic thing? I couldn’t bring myself to want you to hurt. And oh how I tried. I tortured myself trying to imagine you with these girls. I needed to convince myself that I should want you to be miserable. I pictured you touching them and kissing them and holding them and looking at them. Looking at them. That’s the one that really got me. Thinking about how you framed your world around their eyes—even if only for a second—when I thought about that I felt like my body was going to cave in, like I was going to crumble to the floor. And in a sense I think I did. I could stay composed when I thought about you fucking them or holding them or kissing them. I could keep it together. It was the eyes that caught me. The eyes that left me in pieces shattered across the floor. And that is why I don’t want to see you. That is why I’ll avoid you at every turn. Because your eyes don’t deserve me anymore.

You’re going to get hurt by all sorts of people. The people you’d expect and the people you wouldn’t. You’re going to hurt all sorts of people. You’re going to forgive yourself for some of the pain you caused and never let yourself off the hook for other transgressions.

People are going to die. People are going to leave. People are going to reject you. People are going to dislike you and say things about you and try and break you down with their words. Sometimes they’ll succeed.

You’re going to fall in love. Sometimes there will be someone to catch you. Other times there won’t be. Sometimes people will fall in love with you but you won’t fall for them. On rare occasions you’ll find someone who wants you just as bad as you want them. You’ll date. You’ll fall in love. You’ll fight. You’ll probably break up. When you do there’s a good chance you’ll hate the person that you once loved.

Some days you’re going to love yourself and some days you’re going to hate yourself. Your friends will annoy you. You will annoy your friends.

You will be betrayed and you will be hurt and you will be left for dead. You’re going to go to funerals. You’re going to feel ugly. You’re going to get old. You’re going to wish you’d done at least part of it differently. You’re going to be haunted by that one mistake.

You’re going to be foolish. You’re going to realize that you were foolish and then you’ll feel foolish all over again. You’re going to hate at least one job. You’re going to regret at least one of your flings. You’re going to feel weak.

But you’re going to do good.

You’re going to help someone. You’re going to help yourself. You’re going to feel like your existence is worthwhile—at least some of the time. You’re going to hold babies and hold hands and hold flowers. You’re going to kiss and make love and fall in love. You’re going to change a stranger’s life. Your life will be changed by that of a stranger.

You’re going to grow gardens and make art and cook good food and take long naps and dance til dawn. You’re going to find someone who makes you happy. You’re going to feel beautiful and see beauty everywhere. You’re going to see good things spark up from the bad.

You’re going to get back up when you’ve been pushed down. You’re going to learn to love again and this love will be fuller, more determined and more seasoned. You’re going to find a job that you love. You’re going to be appreciated. You’re going to seize the world. You’re going to have really good sex. You’re going to be prophetic. You’re going to make babies. You’re going to better yourself and better the world. You’re going to play with puppies and eat chocolate and indulge in all things simple and wonderful. You’re going to dive into the ocean and lie on the sand and climb mountains and change worlds.

Life is not mutually exclusive to misery or brilliance. To be alive is to suffer. To be alive is to strive. You won’t appreciate the good without the bad, you won’t see the possibilities if you don’t first have the doubts. But finally, and thankfully, moments of beauty can override years of suffering and the deepest pain can be eclipsed.

I know you meant it

when you said that the sky

was going to crumble

into our lawn chairs.

But those weren’t very good lawn chairs anyway.

So who really cares.

And on those idle Tuesdays, the has-beens cover their eyes to forget…
Sometimes they spend so much time forgetting what never was to begin with…
I forget things that never were… Or rather I remember things that never were which in turn forces me to forget… My intent was never to make sense so don’t stop me if you’re lost… So many people are lost… You’d think all the empty boxes of the world would already be taken… You’d think it would be time for us to find… But life is a residual cycle of course… So let’s laugh and forget the things that truly haunt us by trying to forget hauntings of our own inventions… Distraction of our own devices… Wastes of our own meandering experiences… Nothing is forever… We enter and we exit, just like everybody else… We all make asses out of ourselves at some point, we have our dramas our comedies, our laughter and our tears, things we want to remember and things we’d like to forget. The only things we want to forget are those that are still alive… When we’ve put the past to rest there’s no longer an urge to forget it… Not to say the pain goes away… I’m not sure the pain ever goes away… And in the most twisted and awkward sense, I’m not sure I’d want it to… Pain is a caution of sorts… A sign that points out the detour so you can avoid the car wrecks… But that’s not the reason that I’d like to remember the pain… I need the pain so that I can know the good. I need the ugly to remember the beautiful… I need the experience to tell the truth. I need you to tell me when to stop talking…

Because you said it wasn’t worth it…
I’m not sure what is worth it?
I have swam down your Niles and jumped on your band wagons.
Though I never was part of the band.
I don’t even play an instrument.
Then again I don’t think anyone on the wagon did.
It wasn’t very popular at the time.
It was easier to swallow your booze
with a chaser of lies
and drown within ourselves
than to shoot out honesty on strings and wind or keys and boards.
I never believed in you.
I can’t be entirely confident that you ever believed in yourself.
You were built on lies and contradictions.
A too-proud fallacy.
Well I am bigger than you.
I am bigger than “America” and her dreams.
So fuck you and your white picket fences.
Your silly pipe dreams.
Your convenience. Your prince charmings. Your slaves. Your lies.
Your two-hundred dollar jeans.
Your wanna-bes.
Your marijuana.
Your drug-induced fantasies.
Your medications. Your suicides…
We are built on blood and bones.

I don’t like coffee and I don’t like tea. I always feel like such an idiot when I go to all the corner coffee shops and order a hot chocolate with extra whipped cream. I’d look much more hip if I could just say “coffee, black.” I’d take my nasty smelling beverage onto the patio and milk a cigarette while talking about Kafka. But I hated coffee, I choked on cigarette smoke and all I knew about Kafka was that he smeared his feces on the walls of his asylum. So I abandoned the beatnik dream and all the wanna-be beatniks that come along with it. I didn’t fit their style or they didn’t fit mine.

I was in a protest once. Take Back the Night. A bunch of scantily dressed women screaming “this is what liberation looks like.” Who knew liberation looked like cleavage and stretch marks? All the boys in their corner dormitories ignored us, wacking off to pictures of gang-raped women, imagining the looks on our faces if they could throw us down and take us there. And in fact they could. We could scream about liberation all we wanted, but as long as we were bound in their heads, we would be bound in this world.