The sadness descends like a shawl, like a soft covering of something you can't breathe around. There was a purpose once, but it's lost. Music and the words meant something, the ideas meant something. It seems to be blowing away like clouds, like puffs of smoke. I know about losing interest in activities, I know about the face that stares at the T.V. screen. It's just that I can't help it. Things were supposed to be getting better, I'm quite certain that was the deal. Why are they getting worse?
Can I lie and say these words are somebody else's? Can I lie and say I don't care? It would be easier not to care, to not get weighed down with the weight of this perceived failure. I've always envied those who don't care, who have no remorse, despite the cruel things they might do. They get to sail through life with no strings attached, with nothing holding them down and pulling them under. To just once say, "I don't give a shit," and mean it, that would feel so good.
Somehow I've obliged myself to pull this impossible weight. To be all things for all people. To hold up the structure on my shoulders like that bent over statue of Atlas, the world poised between his shoulder blades. Who knew this image in the dusty textbook would become mine?
I think of coffee and I think of cigarettes, little blasts of little legal drugs that take just one thin edge of the pain away. The pain flows through my veins, it drips from the wounds, it fires from my synapses. Some might say I'm overreacting. Is it an overreaction if that's how you feel? Who gets to judge these things? Who can say the weight of my sadness is wrong?
I decided once that for everything to be okay I had to be miserable. If I cracked and showed happiness, a true smile for one second then everything would come crashing down. I know it is this way. But the burden of the misery is too great. It's too great this morning. Maybe I'm writing and trying to get rid of it, to sick it up like poison. Maybe it isn't working. Nothing is working.
Crystal cool air, the coffee safely in its can, the cigarette in its empty pack. I'm here. I can hear the music, the melody not sad enough for me. I need the plaintive voices and the haunting melody to echo my soul this morning. This morning nothing is right. Even the keys of D and A are too upbeat for me.
Giving up is a nice option. Giving up, giving in, I can't go anymore. I've failed and I don't care. I no longer have the energy to care. I've given and I've given and I have nothing left. I leaned up against the painted cinderblock wall and felt the coolness beneath my feverish skin. I give. I've said it to any god that will listen.
I can taste the defeat in my mouth, it dries out my tongue. I could cry for that tough little kid I used to be, the one who kept fighting. I'm sorry. All the fight is gone. I want to scoop up my past self and beg forgiveness. It's that person most of all who I've let down.