Words Fail Me

It’s really too bad that none of the shrinks or mental-health professionals that I’ve seen in my life have been able to help me. It’s too bad that I don’t just have a “chemical imbalance.” It’s too bad I have a tendency to get addicted to everything. It’s too bad I can’t get over myself.

Writing has almost always come easy for me. I remember making stories way back when I was in first grade, and I kept writing for years and years. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I write anything good, but it’s just something that has seemed a natural thing for me to do.

When I was growing up, I had some internal natural inclination to go the opposite way that my parents wanted me to. They wanted a nice little innocent Christian son, and I was anything but.

Our differences led to many confrontations and also many attempts on my parent’s part to get me to speak my mind to them. They said they wanted to know what I was thinking, although I’ve always sworn that they only wanted to hear their answer come out of my mouth (any time I actually DID say what I thought, it would result in a much longer lecture and I quickly learned to shut them out).

Eventually they saw how much I used to write and tried to get me to write them letters to tell them what I thought and felt. I tried that a time or two but learned to not do that because that was even worse than actually talking to them. If I did that then they had something tangible to hold onto and quote me on things and try to prove me wrong.

So I’d write letters and poems and things that I had no intention of ever showing anyone. These were my therapies. They were my ways to get everything out that I otherwise couldn’t.

Most of the time I kept all of them hidden fairly well, but sometimes one parent or the other would find one and I’d be in deep shit because they never said anything nice about either of them. I suppose that should’ve taught them not to snoop in my stuff though.

The thing is that I’m having trouble describing myself. Somehow I can’t seem to get things out right anymore. It seems that words aren’t sufficient any more to describe what I feel or what goes on inside me (if I even know what that is). Nothing I say seems deep enough or effective enough to communicate what’s up with me.

It’s all bland.

In a way I feel like I’m imploding. There are lots of times I feel like the inside of my chest is on fire, yet I don’t really know why. I have to be the most emotional or hormonal dude on the planet.

I wish there was a way out of reality. I wish there was an escape from life. I wish I could just make up my fucking mind.

Can I smile? Can I cry? Can I live? Can I die? Can I love? Can I hate? Can I blame God? Can I blame Fate? Can I portray my life? Can I somehow confide? Can I find an escape? Can I burn up inside?