Home
What is that chance that all of this could be fateful?
My goal is simple – to find the feeling they call home.
I’ve always been able to go out and get it. Whatever – girl, job, money, respect. I have that charge in my chest, the balance between determination, ego, and insanity. I do not listen to no’s, nor do I accept them because they are for cowards. Blind tunnel rage until it is mine. It is fine that I lost a limb or a friend or a hundred other opportunities that I couldn’t see.
It’s been 11:11 a lot lately. It comes in waves. Does it really mean anything? I feel stupid saying it’s angels. Because really it’s just numbers on a device that we invented to enforce a concept created to control people.
It doesn’t matter if it really means anything because I’ll bend until I see the world as I think it is.
How do I keep it together? When I walk to the stereo I do not know what I want to hear. Only that I want to hear something that will really move me. I want to be moved but I’d feel more comfortable if it just came to me. I’d rather not make the decisions because it takes quite a long time to find it and if I don’t find it then what the hell do I do then? I never really know what I want if I’m being honest.
How many times a day am I compromising? The man with his phone on loud in the relaxation room. Every 30 seconds it pinged with a text message. And then his fat sausage fingers hammering away on the keypad in response. Every time it beeped I formulated my reaction to him.
At first it was, “Hey, there’s a button on the side of your phone that makes it silent,” but I thought maybe it was too confrontational.
After another beep I thought I’d try the more enlightened approach, “Hey, you probably didn’t realize this but the beeping on your phone is making it hard for me to relax.” It was pretty chill I thought, but it didn’t account for the fact that I hated him.
Finally, I thought about this one, “Can you please put your phone on silent?” It was direct and confident. Very neuro-linguistically sound and specific. But then I noticed his DC shoes and thought he was the kind of white trash that would say something stupid in retaliation. I was so baffled in my mind about his response that I didn’t know where I would take it from there. Like, does he seriously not understand that only an inconsiderate pile of garbage wouldn’t realize that a phone should be on silent in a shared space designed for relaxation? So I sat and thought about my next response when Dr. K tapped me on the shoulder and said it was time for my adjustment.
I never said anything. I am a compromised human and I’m not taking advantage of what it means to be a free mind in control of my own will.
Why would I walk into an office and sit down and do something that doesn’t address the overwhelming amount of suffering happening on the planet? Everywhere I look people are sad. But for some reason, keeping it together. Compromise everywhere. Undeniable chemistry and conversation that evokes goosebumps left for dead at the end of the office hallway because we must go home with our compromised selves to our compromised lives. Our compromised relationships wait for a compromised dinner and conversations that evoke resentment because the mirror in front of us is reflecting back on someone without the courage to live outside of fear. It’s not our partners that we hate, it’s ourselves.
It’s no longer the perfect person that anyone cares about. There used to be a time when that meant something. But now we know that those people are inherently fucked, weak, insecure, and no longer interesting. Now, it’s about the one person walking in the opposite direction on the sidewalk rehearsing the choreography to her upcoming show that benefits a cause so fucking cool that none of us even knew it was a cause. Because to know it was a cause we’d have to be into some real underground shit, thinking for ourselves to the point where we actually knew the difference between a thought being ours and when it belonged to someone else. When it was intuitive and when it was lined with an agenda accidently written into our DNA by our parents who never addressed their own fears.
If you asked her about the Red Cross she’d laugh in your face. Same with breast cancer awareness. All of the real people know that those are scams. Not her cause though. The founder doesn’t even take a salary. Last week they repelled down a well in Nigeria and pulled out 6 starving, nearly dead children. She didn’t even post about it online. I had to fucking ask her.
This girl, she is fearless. Her courage is palpable enough to make me think that maybe one day I could stand for something. A moment later I realize how unpopular this will be with the current participants in my life. I brush her off as young and naïve and remind myself that she’ll learn one day what it means to live in the real world.
But it’s just another compromise. Another opportunity to be in an original moment crushed because I’d rather waste away in what has already been done a million times.
I call this reality but it’s not even close. This world is not real. I am so far removed from reality that I don’t know if I have enough time to trace it back to its origin.
Home used to be the place where there was relief from being a human. When I got there I would take off my shoes and sit down. I would be done with all the doing. But that sigh of relief would be short-lived because tomorrow morning that moment was no longer home. Because it was a different day and everything was different.
I think we invented physical objects so we could hold onto something. I know that my stuffed animal felt like something when I was little. If I could get back to that I’d be happy.
Home is now about telling that idiot with his phone to shut his GD hole. Or to call myself out on all my compromises and to stop pretending that my justifications aren’t just laughable jokes made of fear. Home is being an original.
