MMXXV

A year I'd always known would come. One filled with closure, reflection, and dread. One that asks a question: Who did I become after this?

I’ve been doing some unorthodox shit lately. I binged a TV show for the first time in my life. I’m doing weird exercises with no names that I can only describe as “channeling the earth spirit” where I bend wide at the knees and feel the tension within my loins as I move. One night I spent half an hour throwing punches in the air, dodging and weaving. I did crunches through the entirety of The Beatles While My Guitar Gently Weeps as shockwaves shot through my core.

I read queer poetry (Crush by Richard Siken, to be precise). I wrote about taxation. I wrote about waiting. I wrote about rules. I wrote in all lowercase. You know those weird websites with AI character chat bots? I looked at those for a quick laugh one night, I said “I can do better”, and I spent a week writing my own. Will they ever see the light of day? No. Did I do a good job? Hell yeah, I did. All in the sake of the esotericism of self improvement.

I set timers on all my apps and websites to stop wasting time, to engage with something new. I watched more movie in the past month than the entire year prior. I tried things and failed. I tried things and won. I let myself do nothing. The sun rose and set another day.

I did all this out of confusion. Granted, I’m always confused. It’s sort of my brand, my eternal damnation. This episode was different in all the same ways the others have been. Who am I? What is all this? What am I to do about it? I feel so much about it, I chase it around like fireflies and attempt to capture them in jars. To look at from every angle, inspect its form, not realizing I’d forgotten to poke holes at the top clouded by my own obsession. It loses its luster from asphyxiation… and I’m left to catch another. Onward and onward, deeper into the forest, deeper into ad hominen. A desperate game of catch and release.

If life were a day, right now it’d be my sunrise. At least, if I believe my life were a long summer day it is that way. If it’s deeper into fall or winter, perhaps I have another eight or nine years until then, although that means the sun is quicker to set all the same. It could be one of my many faults I believe I must always represent the warmth that comes with July, not the month I was created but the one I was given a name within. Where people first saw my eyes. Whether or not fetuses can hear in the womb, birth represents the point where someone had looked at me and said directly “Zach, I love you.”. I’ve carried that strength with me since.

It’d be one thing if I were simply worried about myself, and still would I wager that all of these thoughts and diatribes revolve around me like some autocentric model of the universe. The more I talk about the world, the more feeble I recognize myself for being, my thoughts being held within such an unstable center that they’re worth no merit. Yet, they need to go somewhere, otherwise they rattle within me. Whispering narratives that were all facilitated within that untrustworthy cortex I wouldn’t want others to hear. Meanwhile I oddly absorb its every word.

Regardless, like any other 20 year old, I have minimal experience understanding “the real world” and thus everything is the beginning of my foundation. Perhaps if I’d been 5 years older and been aware enough to see gay marriage be legalized in 2015 and understand what it meant I’d feel differently about America society’s ability to make positive progress. I was 11 then, though, I didn’t even know I liked women (or anyone) then. As far as I’ve been societally aware (since I was about, 14 I’d say), nothing good has happened, in fact I’ve seen the opposite. I’ve seen rights be taken away from certain people, I’ve seen the most blatant act in modern US history of someone using financial influence to gain power of our democratically elected offices (sure, there were people doing this same thing before Elon probably, he’s just enough of a fucking idiot to not be able to keep his damn mouth shut). It’s an ignorant period of only 6 years which this view of mine is based on, but it’s all I have, and it’s hard to be hopeful otherwise. All I have are stories from history which may as well be folklore, they’re far from indicative of the world I’ve come to live in today.

I’m so deeply entrenched in this idea of actionability, that I’m supposed to be the one doing something about the world I see, I’ve truly somehow convinced myself all of the world is my fault. It’s a strange phenomenon. I know I’m not a god, I know of this supposed task’s logistical impossibility, regardless of logic I still feel all the shame. It’s as though it’s the fixed costs of empathy. I’m overcome with a constant urge to apologize. That I’m sorry I couldn’t be more, that I’m aware how little I’ve become. We have free will, then we pay the price for all other things, and I’m not worth enough to cover much of anything.

I say I’m trying, but am I really? Is this a lie I’ve been purporting my whole life as a means to get by? Should anyone believe me simply because I’m feeling sorry? I only seem to feel remorse when its consequences are applicable, yet its sensation is downright searing. It tears me at every end. It curls me into a ball and makes me wish I could never been seen again. My sobs are all truthful, but am I? If I cared so much, wouldn’t I have made the proper changes?

Sometimes my thoughts get so bad, I feel like I can’t talk about them. Because they’re preposterous. Yet they feel so real. I dream of becoming so many ill begotten titles. A murderer, a thief, a tyrant, a terrorist, a villain. A man who fights with gnawing teeth rather than with his heart. Perhaps this is what the Lord means when He says all men are inclined to be sinful.

I make myself believe I do all this in the honor of big picture matters. That I feel these things for everyone. Yet, if that were true, my troubles wouldn’t be so rudimentary. I worry about disappointing my dad. I worry about my teeth rotting out of my head due to my own negligence. I worry about being able to find a job within a reasonable amount of time after I graduate. Sometimes I look in the mirror and see a warrior, and other times I see a fat lazy manchild. I don’t think I’m bipolar or anything of that sort, just the wind gets knocked out of my sails. Any time I find a reason to be proud of myself, it will only be at most a couple of weeks before I’m brutally humbled.

Am I happy? I don’t really know. It can feel that way sometimes, often enough that it becomes some presumed default. Maybe that means I am. It also feels like I’m never supposed to be. I think I’m deserving of all the judgement I receive. Otherwise… I wouldn’t have been given it. You grow to hear tales of the judged of the past and present, the lineage of their transgressions creating captivating pictures in the cosmic sand. We never lost the art of parables, we spread folklore to our children as we always have. Don’t become the garbage man. That whiny man on facebook. The sons and daughters we separated from.

Maybe if I say the right things in just the right way, everything could be okay. There’s some magic sequence of words that could get me everything I wanted, even if it were hundreds of thousands in length. It’s so unreasonable to expect of me, the odds of anyone ever getting it that right are smaller than choosing a precise atom within the observable universe. Yet that possibility’s existence makes any dissatisfaction all my fault… and entirely my burden. It’s why I can never seem to see why anyone should care to listen to me. My opinions, my feelings, my worries, my triumphs, my stories, my jokes, my questions, my answers. It’s always too much, not relevant, not necessary, unasked for. I can’t swish a one in eight hundred septillion chance.

I’ll just keep bricking threes until I get it in.

“When I look at you
Oh, I don't know what's real
Once in a while
You make me laugh
And I’ll sleep tomorrow
And it won't be long
Once in a while
When you take me down
Then you walk away”