I’m sitting here trying to write a poem at 4:23 am. Not doing a very good job. I’m trying to get out how I feel today. Maybe the problem is that I’m not really sure of the feeling I have.
You meet a lot of people in a big city like this. Most of them are interesting, at least as long as you don’t speak to them for longer than it takes to say “I’m Jon. What was your name again?” After that, it tends to go downhill. After a lot of disappointments, you get kind of cynical about the whole meeting people thing. What will they care if you walk away?
Today I sat leaning over the counter at the bookstore I work at, drawing monkeys with six legs and prehensile ears, and I was wondering about all of the ex-girlfriends I have. There aren’t too many. I don’t often get myself into relationships. They’re too complicated, and if I don’t see any potential at all I make damned sure the thing won’t even start. But it happens. You end up with someone. You spend a lot of time with a person. You get to know them, learn to appreciate their flaws, and put them on a sort of pedestal in your heart, because even though they have their little things, things that give you pause when you think of them while brushing your teeth, or cracking eggs into a frying pan, even after you think about these things, you still appreciate the person that carries these quirks. Because God knows you have your own. You don’t feel like having sex, you don’t see the point. You take things too seriously, and you don’t take them seriously at all. But you tell them you love them. You wake up next to them on countless nights. And for those days you squander happily with them, you don’t want to imagine a day when all of that might be over.
But some days, when you’re drawing too-many-limbed primates in your workplace, you start to think of those people that came and went. Those people that said words like, “forever.” Am I the only person that knows this kind of thing won’t ever last forever? You’re lucky if it lasts the week. People talk about trust, about being honest with one another. But one thing I’ve learned is that one should is honest with themselves. A certain glance in the right light from a potential mate who isn’t you, and your chicken is choked. It may be self-righteous but, I swear, I think I’m the only person who could ever live up to my standards regarding that. Maybe I am cynical. But please, show me the person who isn’t human enough to stray, and I’ll show you how to dive off of a twenty-three story building and land on your feet. I’ve drawn the shades of my heart for this sort of thing, and I drew them a long time ago.
Am I the only person though, that can look back, and wonder what these people are up to now? They all go away and do a new sort of squandering. Paper chases. Picking up on the next thing to comes along and sticking with it. Or whatever path you helped them stumble onto, they torch under the moon and run off with some wolf that licks its own asshole. But the biggest part of it all is that they forget about you. They forget all about you. They can’t remember nights in the car in a parking lot, where you actually gave them some of the real things you have to give. They wander off and get married. They have children, and there you are, trying to sober up at 28 years old, and you’re wondering how in God’s name can people be so forgetful? How can you not wonder about these things?
But I don’t really care about ex-girlfriends. In my eyes, they’ve all died in fiery car wrecks, broken legs and all. They bled out and I got the phone call late in the night, and I never have to think about them again. I don’t want them anymore. Not in the slightest. I just think about the fact that people don’t think at all.
The problem with intellectualizing idiotic human behavior is that the exercise becomes less cathartic and more numbing as you progress in your analysis.
It’s a shame that beautiful women find something interesting in me and the only thing I have to offer is the shadow. There is a lot in me that doesn’t come out, and I can’t honestly say that I’ll let what’s making that shadow be seen anytime soon. It ain’t worth it, my babies. Without fail, I start to feel the urge to show someone the idol beneath the sun, and someone else will present a knickknack. Their attention shifts, and by the time they look back at me, I’ve put my hands back into my pockets. “What was I saying? Oh, nothing.”
I’m just tired of the whole chase. You learn to become interested and you can learn to give up. Maybe I’m lonely. Maybe I am. And maybe that loneliness is a stark reminder that being lonely is the one thing you can be sure of, when pretty much everything else is smoke.
6 months ago