#61

It’s funny how things always seem to eventually return to where they were to begin with, isn’t it?

Not so long ago I found myself in a very strange position. After class everyone was beginning to walk out to their cars while some hung behind and talked. Everyone was going somewhere, to a party, to go study for the quiz together, to just go home to eat and then call some friends, some to just go home and sleep because they were tired. Everyone was bustling about, everyone but me. I walked past all of them hearing them talk, hearing them laugh and chitchat. I heard their conversations and heard their plans and I walked past it and moved on into the night. I didn’t realize it at first, but it quickly struck me; I was just where I was all the time, where I always seemed to end up being. I don’t have good friends to go hang out with. I don’t know people to go to parties with. I don’t have people to call. I don’t truly have loved ones. While everyone else had the choice to, I once again didn’t. I was once again walking along in the dark chilly night, metaphorically and physically. Strange that Florida could get so cold, that it would be so cold..

It struck me with some force that even after all the new things I’ve been trying to do and trying to be that I’m still here in the end. It hurts too, in a lot of ways. Not so much because I’m alone, I’ve grown used to being betrayed, being lied to, or just abandoned and eventually ending up alone in the end. I’ve grown used to being alone and not letting it bother me conciously, though I know it could if I let it. What bothers me most isn’t that at all, it’s because I have absolutely no choice in the matter. I can’t choose to keep just one person (because I would). I can’t choose to go fit and to go hang out. Because I just don’t. Even as different as I am, even without being the jackass I used to be at all outwardly, I’m still regarded as weird for thinking all the time; I just operate on different levels than the others around me. They’re worried about their friends, they’re worried about studying and getting their grades up, they’re worried about their car. To me such things have a much lower importance level. I’d rather think and ponder the world, I’d rather practice emulating my ideals and fufilling them. Those other things matter, yes, but not so much with me…they’re secondary. As is pretty much everything physical. Hell, even the people who end up talking to me over such things don’t seem to care as much about them as I do. In a lot of ways I feel that they’re just listening because it’s interesting; a break from the norm. They don’t ever take it to the depth that I do, it never possesses them because, deep down, it doesn’t really matter at heart, at least not compared to other things. Oh, my family issues are more important, what my friends think of me matters more, school has to be done or some other such bullshit. It irks me that the others around me never seem to take anything to a deeply spiritual level; they always put their lives ahead of that. I just don’t see how any single life is more important than the bigger things, I suppose. And it shames me that others don’t seem to see that as well. Even those who claim to believe that don’t act on it. It’s easy to say something, it’s easy to take an oath. It’s very very hard to hold that up and to live by it and right now it feels I’m the only person I know who does. Out of absolutely everyone I know, adults, everyone. Even those two who strike me as being so much like me aren’t driven as I am towards this end. Not even my girlfriends who are (inevitably it seems) spiritual as well seem to focus on it as much as I do. Every day, that’s not that obsessive; that’s just devotion and belief in the importance of it. I do other things too, I’m busy too and I don’t just let it go, why do they?

I don’t have the answers. I don’t know why people do it. If I had to venture a guess it’d be what I was saying all along; it’s not as important to them as they say it is, as they think it is. Real importance grabs you and holds on; it doesn’t just pop up once in a while when the time is opportune for it to come up. It’s not something worth only token lip-service on Sundays. That’s not devotion, that’s not importance, that’s called ‘going through the motions.’ That’s called lip-service.

It always shocks me when I’m reminded of the schism between me and the rest of mankind. It always surprises me that it’s so very deep and so very wide. In fact, in the past I used to constantly wonder why I was so different from everyone else, why was I ostracized even when I’m being nice, why? Am I something special or am I defect? I look just like you. I have eyes, I have ears, I have hair and I can talk. I feel just like you, though perhaps I feel a bit more profoundly. I think just like you do. The subjects may be different but we both think. But no matter what I do, I end up being pushed aside in the end. I think that, in a large way, I understood far too much far too quickly as a child. Now at twenty, I’m seeing the others in my school around me at 18, at 26, at 32 all going through the things I’ve already experienced, already understand and already am far, far past. Gives me an edge because I can relate to almost everyone, but at the same time…I’d rather it not be like that.

Because it pushes me on the outside and makes me alone. I don’t like it very much, walking alone with my burdens on my own back and mine alone, walking through the chilly biting cold without really feeling it. That’s just what I was doing, physically and mentally, that night. At first the bite sinks in and hurts, and it stings, and it bothers you a great deal and you want to run, but you know you have such a long way to go anyway and tiring yourself out will just make it worse in the long run so you don’t…and then after a while you just don’t feel the sting anymore. It becomes natural, the norm. And that’s what’s happening to me once again. I’m starting to get used to it again. After all, what else is there for me to do? I could scream and yell at it and it wouldn’t change a thing. I’ve tried. I could wish it away as much as I could, constantly, all the time. I’ve done that too. It didn’t work. I could attack it, I could punch it, I could throw everything I could think of at it. But in the end, this lamentation will just absorb those things too and make it a part of it’s own. So there’s no point in fighting it. No point in trying at all. I can focus my strength elsewhere; fighting battles like these, battles you can’t win is just a waste of your very soul. Because these battles are just like those with people…instead of losing countless lives you lose the very essence of yourself; you lose a bit of your own soul, sometimes chunks. I’d rather my contentedness and happiness be drained away than my spirit. My spirit can be battered and survive; it’s happened often enough before, no reason it can’t happen again. I’m in the best shape of my life, honestly, in the spiritual way. I don’t know if I’m as powerful as I need to be to survive years once again (I lost almost all of my fire the last time that happened…it never really came back) so I hope things’ll work out towards the brighter sooner rather than later. But that’s probably a false hope too. *sighs and shakes head*

I’m not happy. And solitude is begin to suck away at my contentedness as

well. I wish I could say it was just a mood swing but I’ve done this enough to know better; it’s not just a mood, this one something much bigger than that and it always is, in the end. I remember it well. And really, there’s no real hope this time; I’ve already decided on just rejecting relationships for a while. I’m sick of being abandoned and/or betrayed. That hurt is much more than just this. I know that if I stay out in the cold long enough it’ll stop bothering me eventually…I may warp and crack on the inside as I did before, but it’s not such a big deal if I don’t feel it. I can focus my devotions on the things that matter and everything’ll be fine. After all, if I don’t feel it I won’t react nor impress it upon other people and that’s very important. My life seems a fair sacrifice for peace.