To Stand Alone

I find myself lonely in my store at night. Standing under the bright gas station lights its difficult to see through the murky darkness that surrounds the small building, and I realize I wish people were with me. Not certain people, just anyone. Someone to talk to. Someone to fume at. Someone to help. I find I have been alone long enough.

Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K Hessel's life. His breakfast will taste better than any meal you or I have ever tasted.

I dreamt of her tonight. Again. I'm free of her in every way possible, in reality, but the one place I can't seem to shake the wonderful and frightening image that is her from my dreams. I'm done with her, completely, but I can't help enjoying these small moments in the quiet nights when I think of her face, and her lips, the feel, smell, and taste of both. It's an impression of her effect on my like a footprint or ghost, playing the part of the whole. I don't mind indulging this small vice of mine after all it is harmless and has no lasting effect on me unlike that which my dreams imitate, and these dreams, they always make my mornings a little brighter. Depressing as that is.

Some People Just Want to Watch the World Burn

So its been a while, a little over half a year, and in this time I've abandoned my whale, moved, and found a kind of inner peace. All the turmoil I was living in just a few months ago has gone. I live a more peaceful life now, a simple life, a boring life. The days pass here in a slow monotony like a constant view of dull shapeless grey water paintings. Sometimes in the car I consider the vehicle in front of me and wish for fire, or some catastrophic driver error that would send the car and its occupants swerving off the road and into a tree, or a ditch; I'm not picky. Sometimes I just wish for something interesting, for something to burn.

And then, something happened. I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.

I can't do it. I thought I could, I really did. I was wrong of course. When have I ever been right about anything? That knife's edge I thought I could sit on is sharper than I could've ever imagined, and it cuts deep, so painfully deep. Everything I told myself I would avoid I've started to do, in small ways at first, but my mistakes are growing and occurring more often with depressingly disastrous results. I just can't do this, because I know what's going to happen. Nothing. All this effort, all these emotions, and biding my time is going to end up destroying me. She's not going to dump him, he will never dump her, and I will be left standing alone, again. I just need to give up. Give up on this ridicules campaign of finding someone to be with. No one will elect for the job and I don't consider myself worthy enough of most people to go after them. I just need to stop. Accept that I will always be alone, give up the hope of finding someone who will love me despite my flaws, because no one will, ever. I don't know why I ever thought this would work in the first place. Blind optimism is the only reason I can think of, unfortunately optimism like people will only let you down and crush your mind, body, and soul.

Ugh Fuck Everything
and you, you stupid bitch
I love you
I hate you
I hate that I love you
I hate that you will never love me
I want you
You think sex with me is laughable
Fuck Life

Picture the fire still burning, except now it's beyond the horizon. A sunset.

We spent the first night together since our drama. And it was easy, free, light. I just had to make a choice: be her friend, be what she needs now and later she'll be what I need. It's such an obvious solution, so elegant and pragmatic that I'm irritated that I didn't come up with it earlier. Now I just need to stick to this plan of action, stay focused and let my attraction and emotions burn at a slow ember instead of the bonfire they usually erupt into. Because those feelings are still there, still burning beneath my chest and warming me the way brandy warms me. Even now I'd give her anything for her to be happy and if that means stepping back until her life blows up in her face, then so be it. You can't make an omelet without breaking a couple eggs after all. It's all coming together, and for the first time since She Who Will Not Be Named left, I feel as if my life can be simple, easy, and free. I can be an honorable man. I can be happy.

I ran. I ran until my muscles burned and my veins pumped battery acid. Then I ran some more.

Someone from my past is coming back into my life. She's a woman that, for all intents and purposes, is my own personal Moby-Dick. I've destroyed myself in pursuit of her because of some obnoxious and fatal attraction to her that I've never truly understood. For a long time now I've maintained a policy of no contact so as to not get sucked back into the trap she is, but now she's back and I feel myself falling back down into that rabbit hole, except the bottom of this particular hole does not empty out into color and wonder, but into the deepest pit of darkness and despair I've ever experienced. And now she's back. I can't help myself around her, she stirs in me all the things I despise, nobility, motivation, and affection. I destroy myself trying to become this figure of stability and virtue so that I may feel as if I am the one that is right for her. But I'm not. I know I'm not, so I run. I'm running now, harder and faster than ever before from the only thing in the world that makes me feel as if I deserve something more than solitary nights and a cold, empty bed. I run so that when things come to a head and she tells me I could never be anything more than I am, I won't feel as if the floor of the world has been ripped out from under me. It's going to happen. I know it will. So I run. I'll run like I've never run before. No matter how much I think about her or want her. I run.

I felt like putting a bullet between the eyes of every Panda that wouldn't screw to save its species. I wanted to open the dump valves on oil tankers and smother all the French beaches I'd never see. I wanted to breathe smoke.

Nighttime has always been my time. The period of time when I feel most like myself. In the brightness of the day the most beautiful things in the world look staged, as if they've only been put there to be beautiful. In the darkness of night there is no posing, no people to pose for. The only people I see in the night are the ones that don't know I'm there watching them. That's the only real way to see what a person is really like, watch them at night when they think they're alone. They don't smile and laugh or fix their hair, it's the only situation in which you'd see someone scratch their ass. Sometimes it feels like I'm a lion prowling among the tall grasses of some African savanna, eying clueless gentle gazelle. Usually I'll carry a knife just to feel the edge of it's blade when I see these gazelle, because then I know I hold their lives in my hands, if I wanted them to die they would. I am the apex predator, nothing hunts me.

But for the most part there is only me. I see no one and no one exists. The only sound I hear, the only sound in the world is the beating of my heart. Sometimes when I'm alone in the night I like to pretend that I'm alone, not alone as in being by myself, but truly alone, the last person on earth alone, post apocalyptic alone. It's a comforting thought. There would be no one to pretend for, no one to impress, no one to betray, no one betraying you. I would be released from all the things I hated. I would be free.

Then the sun rises and it's back to all the light and everything I hate.