I am in the deep end and can't find air.
I am throwing punches with a blindfold on.
Stop riding my tail with your high beams on, because I may just brake suddenly.
I would rather not explode - that's your job.
I'm stuck in between two worlds in a maze of dreams and thoughts.
I am wrapped in the moon's embrace, trying vainly to see the glimmer of stars in the distance, even lifeless planets would be something. Something else out in the galaxy that I call my own. Denied. Shot down. Hopeless. Nothing. Yet, still I hold to her image. Yet, still I crave her company and her smile. Yet, still I can't get enough of her intoxicating presence. I am still obsessed, still drunk on the vast quantity of sun beams I've imbibed over the infinite lifetimes. I still long to feel the light wash over me in some sort of providential bath. How that must feel...
I love her. I will always love her. The pain in my body claims such, and so it must be true. I can focus on endless nothings and somethings simultaneously and otherwise and still come back to the same conclusion. My life is truly nothing without her. My only hope out of the red is her, and even now I haven't given up completely. It's no longer a matter of logic or reason but of self-preservation. I do this to stay alive. I do this to breathe. No matter how much it tears me up inside.
All the sudden I remember to feel the warmth of the moon. My cold skin, ravished, eats the body heat up as if it would die from hypothermia at any minute. The heat returns me to numbness. The contact clouds my head. I grow confused. I wake up. I realize that I'm not where I think I am and I push her away.
A look of dejection and sorrow. A look of rejection and disgust. She is tired of this apparently. Three days? Really that long? They all blend into each other now. Apparently I need to get on and move on and do something better with my life. Apparently I know nothing and should just stop being an idiot and find someone else. But I can't.
She doesn't understand. She can't understand. The great lengths I had to go to before to find this person...I simply haven't the strength to traverse them again, let alone conquer them and rise into some new suit of armor. My Achilles' heal is laid out across my chest with written directions on suicide. I read it aloud in my mind and save them for a rainier day. The moon has left me. The sun has too.
I get up and walk downstairs, fashioning my best smile. I focus in that way that abherrations such as I do, not really focusing on anything but still focused, still drowning out the outside and the inside worlds. I wish to face neither demons right now and will busy myself with whatever presents itself, whose completion seems even marginally plausible anyways. The potential lack of radiance in darkness was unfound, undiscussed, and undiscovered. Then where am I?
My thoughts drift back again to what I desire, rather reluctantly and desperately in the same moment. Perhaps it is not over. Perhaps there is hope. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. If. If. If. NOTHING. It is over. There is no hope. There are no ifs. She is gone. I am dead...so very dead.
My brain accepts this to save itself...and then throws it away to accomplish the same fleeting goal. Protected both ways, but not really protected at all. I am a master at this, adept at forming impenetrable defenses from shambles. Sadly, these walls always crumble at the smallest penetration, as they aren't real or permanent. Transient. Imaginary. I want to live in dreams, but I don't even have them when I wake up anymore. My poor, stupid, numb mind, isolated to save itself from the crushing weights of death and doom. Why, hello purgatory, hello heaven; I love the fair maiden that resides in these places. I shall name her Sam. And she shall be everything to me.
Sam is here, talking to Carly. They're discussing the terms of not helping me anymore. I don't want their help. Not anymore. Not if it isn't even real. Not if it will just leave me worse off later. I need something more, something stronger, something permanent, anything permanent. Like love perhaps. I shall love this Sam. This Sam just newly born. This Sam just newly grown. This Sam I have never met before. This Sam my life has intertwined with. All but one moment have been retained. This moment I shall lie of to myself, for it never happened. Yet, deep down I know it is a lie. Yet, if I forget what it is a lie about, how will this knowledge help me in remembering the truth? If only it would work, I would be free.
Sam is staring at me, watching me watching TV. Off we go to school. Sam is staring at me, watching me walking. I look at her reluctantly, feeling the pain in the pit of my heart come back in spades. Such horrible, crippling pain. It is difficult to ignore. I zone out completely in attempt to dissauge it's control. It works and defers the moment, refracting it into one single band that I can focus on for the next lifetime in silence and sorrow. My head is hung, but my feet still walk, and I am amazed that I am still walking; the feat seems impossible and improbable. I raise my head, appearing pensive but secretly wanting all to know of my sorrows. Sam is staring at me, watching me struggling to cope. Then she stops.
The day goes by. Another does too. And another. I am becoming an expert at this. Sam no longer looks for signs of pain and misery. She no longer cares to even search. No one does, even though they wouldn't have to dig down very deep. I immerse myself in the Internet. It alone is my friend. The music of devils and demons and banshees and humoncoli and succubi creates a world of understanding. It is what I spend my time doing now. iCarly no longer suffers from my suffering. Things are seemingly back to normal, only I am not.
And I see Sam, and I bask in her beauty. And I wonder...I wonder exactly how it is that she became so beautiful. I wonder exactly how she formed. I want to know. But I'll never know, only appreciate. I drive her from my mind as best I can and search for that hollow in the recesses of the shadows. I love it there. I stay there as I await my daily word-beatings. The cobwebs get swept away as I run out of space to hide my problems. I fear another break is coming; I fear another breach. I fear. I am afraid. I am dead.
Don't you understand me?
This cloud over my head is not okay.
There are things that I need to get done.
and it doesn't give you permission to take a shot below the belt.
A Shot Below the Belt - August Burns Red
Breaking dawn will bring revenge
We should know by now
We're so sick
It was building up and no one was watching
We're running out of darkened corners to sweep the waste into
In our distracted focus no one had a chance
When we lined up at the edge
We were open wide
Like fools, waiting for a sign
It was a free fall
An act of desperation, our backs against the wall
It was a free fall
It was an act of desperation, down we go
The Failsafe - Misery Signals
I hide behind the lens as I perform the monotonous task of filming droll behavior. Sometimes I wonder if it really matters to wear a smile that no one will pay attention to. I push that and other thoughts from my head and resume focusing on that which I shall never have in my possession. Cruel irony: all I desire is all I'll never have.
The camera is drifting, gaining new focus, new insight into this celestial entity. Unaware, the lens zooms in onto her face, changing positions to center on her wonderful features. My goddess from the foam begins to notice problems: the camera's changing position. Carly warns me that I'm shifting the camera too far over. I do not hear her. All I see is Sam's face twist into annoyance and then full blown anger. Her face is wonderful, so perfect in any and all expressions. She realizes what's happening, where I'm recording, and begins to blush and leaves the camera's sight.
I see the fist coming towards me even before I see her raise her arm. I let it hit me in the shoulder; I let her shove me aside. I listen to her berate me on filming the webshow and forgetting about dating her. I see her mouth form the words; I hear the wonderful sounds created; I feel the mystic energy emanated from these words and the tension so evident in her face. But my mind cannot string them together. She tells me to pay attention...
"I am. I'm paying attention to the most beautiful creature that ever walked the Earth."
"Shut up! I don't like you! Get it out of your head, Freddork! Here, maybe a wedgie'll help you get the message!"
Her arms wrap around me and pull my boxers up. Instant pain. She smacks me across the face and orders me to refocus the camera.
"What are you talking about? It's focused on what we should see!"
She smacked me again.
"At least let me be around you. Is that so much to ask?"
Another smack. She raises her hand once more.
"Smack me again, and I'll kill myself..."
"Don't do that. Just get over me!"
"I can't! It's impossible! I suppose I've inherited that from my mother!"
"Go back to loving your computers, dork!"
"No."
Another smack.
I leave the room. Sam is busy trying to readjust the camera. iCarly finishes its broadcast without me. Carly and Sam are now fed up with my behavior.
They find me downstairs, lying on the couch, arms bleeding, a plastic bag around my head. Sam removes the bag and takes the tack away. She takes my head in her arms and gives me a really hard shake.
I kiss her through it. I kiss her stomach through it. Through her clothes. So warm, so wonderful. I love it. Sam stops and waits for me to stop. She takes my head in her hand...
"Are you finished yet? Look, I'm sorry, but it's just not going to happen! I'm not attracted to you that way! I wasn't even jealous when Carly started to show some sympathy for you...I don't like you like that, okay?"
"Okay..." I never cry. But now...it hurts so much that I really want to. Only a single tear falls from my eye. They cannot cry. They are in shock.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes..."
"Good"
"Good..."
"Now dork?"
"What?"
"Could you buy any nerdier clothes? What, did your mom leave in her will, 'Freddie, my son, always wear dorky clothes and beware of ticks and other parasitic bugs?'"
I smirked halfheartedly...well no-heartedly. I stood up. I walked to the door. And I left on an aimless walk to nowhere in an attempt to clear my troubled head. No matter what, I'll still love Sam.
Some kind of friction has scarred me, but created your new style.
My reasons to endure used to be based around who you were,
and your brilliant passion that could blaze right in front of a perfect stranger.
This is my downfall - my blemish, I've been told before.
Quit holding on to what she was.
Too Late for Roses - August Burns Red
You were my anchor
Anchor - Misery Signals