memory comes when memory's old

(Epilepsy warning?)

(from the loss album; reflections wandering the Twisted: Delirium hunt stops.)

I held onto you for as long as I could but today
you fell away
now all I hold are the memories we barely made


Is a year long enough to let go? Is a year with no questions answered something I just need to accept? I'm not good at accepting that I'll never know. I keep wanting to push.

I think the time to push is over, though.

(from the loss album; the Twisted: Delirium asylum before the end game.)

I stood on the edge of your bridge until I felt the rain
push me away
my confusion left me fast as the vertigo came

The problem is, I keep running into things--ideas, concepts, dreams, nightmares...The little gifts, the things that make my life work, old letters, old memories...Everything still hurts.

Maybe I need to accept that, too. It hurts less than it did. Give it another year, it will hurt even less.

All it's going to take is time.

(from the loss album; the Twisted: Delirium asylum before the end game.)

what I believed to be true, it was only a dream
that lived in me
I just projected it over your beautiful screen

Directions can be tricky. Especially when, at several points over the past year, I knew I was moving, but I lacked any sense of direction. Was I moving closer to the loss, walking away? Was I on the path or lost in the maze?

I still don't know.

(from the loss album; the Twisted: Delirium asylum before the end game.)

I self-medicated my way through this mess that we made
so I could stay
there was nothing, but I waited, I waited

I think it's all coming up now, hitting this hard again now, because the life is currently being pared down to what works, what doesn't, and what needs to change. That I never wanted anything to change is, again, something I'm just going to have to find a way to cope with.

There's a way to cope with it. Because otherwise, there's no point to any of it, no point to accepting what happened, no point to my attempts to understand, my failures to comprehend. I refuse to accept, absolutely refuse to accept, that there's no point to this long, strange spin into the coldness of the outer reaches.

(from the loss album; the Twisted: Delirium asylum before the end game.)

this was my mistake
broken are plans we made
so I will be traveling any place
'cos anywhere's better than here

I have to accept there's a reason why I'm here, and there's a reason why it's now. (Echo from the head, old Buffy episode quote: "Because now is the time my mom moved here." Maybe it really is that random. There's no purpose, there's just occurrence.)

(Do I really believe that?)

(from the loss album; the Twisted: Delirium asylum before the end game.)

here we rest in peace
rubble beneath the feet
I shouldn't have followed you anywhere
'cos anywhere's better than here

And looking for fixed landmarks, when my entire system is in flux, in the grip of deep change and alteration...it was never going to work. But just because something won't work doesn't stop many of us from trying to make it work this time. Because doing a thing that has failed to work in the past, ever, doesn't mean it won't work now. Right?

(Or at least, that's how we think of it. And we're always wrong.)

(from the loss album; the Twisted: Delirium asylum before the end game.)

where is the space I could move?
where could I rest my head?
there's nothing left for me here

And it's so easy, it's always been so easy, to identify the polarities and hold to them. Black, white, no shades of grey, no misinterpretions, no complications. Yes or no. Fail or win. Love or...don't.

The problem with such binary thinking is that it misses the very valid, very real states of the in-betweens. Black, white and grey after all, and most of life's decisions fall into the grey. It's never either/or, after all--it's always either/or/and.

(from the loss album, and the Twisted: Delirium hunt's end game.)

it's hard to leave behind
the one thing that made me feel alive
so I slide from paranoid to paralyzed

That's one of the real problems in all this. Over-analysis only goes so far, after all, and a one-sided debate still doesn't have all the answers. And it's so easy to pause, "just for a while", and realize only months later all we were doing was standing in place. Afraid to move forward, or back, or...at all.

(from the loss album, and the Twisted: Delirium hunt's end game.)

this was my mistake
broken are plans we made
so I will be traveling any place
'cos anywhere's better than here

Just keep moving. Just keep breathing, keep acting, don't stop, don't overthink. But I overthink; it's what I do, it's what I've always done. If there is any great truth to me, it's that I analyze everything to death, and maybe past it. I'm not good at letting things go.

Even things that hurt me.

this was my mistake
broken are plans we made

I have to stop reaching for what could be. Given time, given understanding, given answered questions...none of which I'm going to receive, save for time...maybe things might change. "Maybe", in this usage, is soul-destroying poison. It doesn't keep hope alive; it embeds me in resinous denial, waiting to ossify.

I don't want to ossify. If I'm broken, I'm broken; so be it. But I don't want to freeze in place, hurting, untrusting, unwilling, afraid.

I have things to fear. I have things to make me suffer. I don't need more.

(from the loss album, and Twisted: Delirium's final room.)

here we rest in peace
rubble beneath our feet
I shouldn't have followed you anywhere
'cos anywhere's better than here

I've rested, I've tried to heal, I've pushed it all inside to remain trapped in the glue of my doubts and my deepest regrets. I tire of the taste of them. There is no part of me that doesn't want back what I had, but ultimately, I do not have this now, and wishing will never return it to my heart and my arms.

It's been a year. I've mourned a year. It's time to stop mourning and move on.

(Song is Anywhere But Here by the Sick Puppies.)