look me in the eye and tell me

letter to an undisclosed person

it snowed tonight. not as much as they said it would, of course. but enough. more than it has the past few times. enough to call it a real snowstorm, with a few inches of snow hanging off the branches. not the shroud of white covering everything when you open your eyes and you don't know where the ground is because the sharp, cold air is making you high, and your lungs are feeling like they should always feel, and your feet aren't quite on the ground, and you can't quite tell where your body ends and the soft crunching, delicate, white powder snow sinking beneath whatever you think is your feet and where that stops and what is the ground.

i cannot sleep again. i'm very sick in some way. i think those nights of repeated insomnia i spent with you took a big toll on my body. my body takes less and less abuse. the signs of age aren't the signs we are looking for. the things we used to do that we could roll over in the morning and not give a second thought, now gives us days, weeks, and yeah, months of pause, while we wonder how did we grow up, and why did we grow up, and why is being an adult so difficult, painful, and most of all, devoid of all the things in life that we grew to love, to enjoy, to wish for, to dream for, to hope for. being an adult is about learning to love pain, except in some people's cases, we already learned how to learn how to love pain before we became an adult. all that growing up did was give us responsibilities, our problems aren't other people's anymore. they are ours. we don't want them to be ours. we want to be that child that dreamed at night and woke up in the morning with a smile, because, faith was a real thing, because dreams were a real thing, because hope was a real thing. all of these things are still real now. we just have to pull our nails out, hair out, do stupid things, things we regret, to get to where we want, to sacrifice what we are, what we think we are, to learn what we really are, and then find out what disgust we hold towards ourselves for surviving. is surviving worth it? it must be for most people. at some level. they are alive. is surviving worth it for me? it's only a question i can answer for myself and anyone who knows me, knows that my answer would be pretty firm. it isn't worth it. it isn't worth the pain. the struggle. the hurt. the loss. the loss. the loss of friends, of family, of love, of what is instrisicticaly you. surviving isn't change, it's being something else. i don't think anyone can be someone else, for themselves, or for someone else,. we can try. we can try really fucking hard. i've tried. so many times. i persevere, i try, i do what i can, as best as i can, but, failure is always what looks back at me in the face. what, allen, am i doing here alive. waiting day by day, crying when i can't sedate myself to sleep. i cry because i have no reason to cry. i cry because i have no reason to want anything. i cry because i want something. i cry because i know i can't have anything. i cry for every reason. i cry for myself and i cry for what i am. i cry that i let myself get like this. this isn't pity, it's angst, it's anger, it's hatred. allen -- if i had the courage to do things earlier in my life, to take those steps before my life became what it is now, then i wouldn't wake up each morning feeling sick to the stomach knowing that my name is allen. knowing that this person, allen, is a coward, a fool, a weakling, a person who avoids everything and who is still that child who is desperately trying to cling onto what a child does. the dream. the want. the hope.

i've lost the dream. i've lost the want. i've lost the hope.

i lost it a long time ago, but i kept on trying to be the child i knew. being a child living in an adult world doesn't work. every single thing someone says to me, if it's a bad day for me, i'll drop deep down into sadness, and blame becomes what i am, first it is blame myself. then it's blame the world. finally if it is bad enough it's blame them and yet again, make someone good in my life leave me.

people like hurt. i think i'm proof of it, in what i do to myself. in what i do to torture and make my life move as slow as molasses, as slow as the molasses incident that killed hundreds of people in an accident -- funny isn't it? death by being too slow? slow as syrup? that is my feelings inside, turn my upside down, bang on the neck with a knife and try to get something to pour out, minutes, minutes, minutes go by, and you might get something from inside me. the rest of me is stuck together, stuck in this whole, stuck. stuck coagulated feelings, sticking all together, in one big mess. my brain is a child who fell asleep with gum in their mouth. except my brain is that everyday. i need to pick apart the fibers of my being, and not tear our even more strands and lose what i am, again, i do this, almost every day, the same kind of action. the same kind of waking up. life didn't use to be like this. sometimes i don't care. sometimes i rip a knot of hair out and say, i can't remember yesterday, i won't remember this, let me cry now, and tomorrow i'll forget why i cried. who cares? in the end, we can ask ourselves that. who cares? who cares? does anyone? i'm losing what i had, the care i had, the care i had came from being something for someone, i won't do that anymore. it isn't true to myself, and how silly is it for me to throw in something moral sounding like that in my diatribe on self-loathing. i'm true to my own ideals, flawed as they might be; perhaps that's why i can't be something i feel is human. i'm certainly not human in my own eyes. i'm cobbled together, taken pieces from those people who have shared with me, taken here and there, and incorporated it into myself. that isn't how a person becomes. it isn't how a person figures out who they are. it's a person who isn't a person, a person so devoid of themselves, that they need so many other people to fill up what is missing, and whatever a person gives me, i treasure it more than gold, and make that idea, that action, that word, idealistic. i'm a mish-mash of ideas, from here and there, from people who would disagree with each other, and even i disagree with myself, but i don't budge, because it's what i made myself. you know the simple things people say when they make a snap judgment about someone? like, for example, you're fucked up. well, that is as accurate as i can say, and as accurate as anyone can say about me. i'm fucked up. the reasons are there, the few of them, the few that i can let out a little out at a time as that drizzled molasses tries to come out of the bottle onto the fried omelet that was my adolescent brain.

i don't have a reason to keep going. this is all what these words mean. i need a reason. a reason for myself. i'm desperately trying to find that reason. i haven't.

i'm scared. i'm doing things i would never think i would go back to doing. the thought of not waking up has turned into a comfort instead of a fear. that is fearsome in how it effects my daily behavior, my daily thoughts, my daily actions, and my future.

i have nothing right now for myself. i have lost the reasons that kept me believing that there was an alternative. i'm still trying, but please don't be upset if i can't find an answer on my own. i want to more than anything.

if only meanings were like apples and one would fall on my head. i could use a kick in the head, but that wouldn't give me a reason. i could use something to the head, to give me this thing i'm searching for. i could use something.

i just wish it was a thing that i could obtain from friendship. friends are there to catch you when you fall. i've fallen, and i've been caught. now what? now what happens?

you tell me. i don't know what happens.