all is good and nothingness is dead

wonder how you sleep
I wonder what you think of me
if I could go back
would you have ever been with me?

I live a lot in the past. I hang a lot on 'should'. Neither is particular effective, supportive, or at all helpful. That's known, but--so far, at least--unchanging.



I want you to be unused
I want you to remember
I want you to believe in me
I want you on my side

And I'm staring at the sign across the way that asks, What if all this didn't happen? Oh, I don't mean at all, I mean, in conversations with another involved in all this, it was mentioned he should have cut things off the first time there was a spastic disconnect in understanding.



come on and lay it down
I've always been with you
here and now, give all that's within you
be my savior
and I'll be your downfall

And my answer was--after this week or so of thinking, poking at trauma new and old, trying to figure myself out from the inside of the cage--that I wouldn't want to have lost the months in between, because--even a tentative almost-now, could-be-more-later? Is better in my eyes than just--nothing, *poof,* over and done.



here we go again
ashamed of being broken in
we're getting off track
I wanna get you back again

And he nodded. Because...that was his point. I'm hurting more now, he thinks, because he didn't step in back then and call a halt to things. That all of this could have been avoidable if he'd just said, Right, you're done, you're never seeing him again the first time.



I want you to trouble me
I wanted you to linger
I want you to agree with me
I want so much so bad

And...I mean, maybe? I told him I'm too close to it to tell, still, but--part of me scoffs and says it would have happened anyway--my heart goes where it will, not where I'd necessarily choose to go--but the other part isn't sure. Because he did allow things to still happen. He did make the choice that he thought that other hand learned from the first schism, or at least learned enough to move forward with me safely.

And now I can't help factoring that in to the end analysis of what's happening now.



come on and lay it down
I've always been with you
here and now, give all that's within you
be my savior
and I'll be your downfall

So...on the one hand, sure. Rationally, I wouldn't have this flinching away, I wouldn't have this trembling, I wouldn't have the soft, constant swaddling of anguish over everything. Would I have been better off? Would I have been happier?



yeah, be my savior
(only love can save us now)
(don't lay me down)
(only love can save us now)

And as I said, I'm still too close to tell. And it's consigned to the territory of should anyway, because--things are not going to miraculously go back and alter at this point.



now I'm back on my own
hear my feet, they're made of stone
man, I make you go where I go
well hell, you, can I take you home
well, I'm coming home on my back
kissing me, your lips painted black


I am beginning to make peace with things. I am beginning to adapt. It would be nice if other parts of the life weren't so haywire--the world burning to the ground, the employment in acid stasis--but I really can't do anything about any of that right now. Not even this current situation. I can't fix it, I can only try to understand it, and hope I'm reaching the right conclusions, and adapt to the sea changes as I find them.

There's too much salt in my system, too much desert in my eyes, but I'm not sinking to the ocean floor again. No, if I'm going to be up here, I'm going to be present, and relearn how to breathe, relearn how to walk instead of swim. No more hiding.

No more disconnection.

(Pictures taken on JAMBO, Fallen Angel, Kingsport, The Docklands at Bay City, Leafminer, BAE Bean Coffee, the FeverZone, the House of the Spirits, and Lyrics from Matchbox Twenty's "Downfall".)