Maybe Write Pretty
“Maybe write pretty”
The thought falls off a plateau landing somewhere between the categories of ironic and felonious bullshit. Staring at the four walls this room has to offer as I pace; reclined to wearing a figure eight pattern in the ground until the distress of these four walls makes me weak and I succumb to the hyperventilating brought on by thoughts of whether I should smear the walls in holes or blood or shit or bile.
The manic-depressive cycle consumes me.
Reach inward, I tell myself.
I blink through the music on my playlist. Jazzy, upbeat, tempos turn to slow sultry dreamy hits that are then replaced by steel guitar strings calling to my emotions to twang along with the country singer and close my eyes. My eyes flutter and fall before I am shot with another fear-based shot of adrenaline. I force myself awake, reminding myself there is no peace in the dreams I have been having lately.
Reach inward,
I tell myself this again because boy- I’m running out of self-help to administer. I breathe while attempting an “inward pull”; whatever the fuck that means. I don’t know, but the books swear it will help to control myself in these episodic moments. I grasp in the depths of inward and find ‘inward’ decisively shallow. Bummer. I mentally grope myself and find the result lacking as grossly as this sentence structure.
Somewhere between the music, the chain-smoking, and the general avoidance of anything I might catch my reflection in, I have grown quite fond of stacking things. I stack the half-read self-help books into towers, their shadows providing shade to the stacks of empty cigarette cartons. I maneuver through my stacks rather deftly for a man so unsure of himself. I marvel at the ability to wheeze back and forth; unable to breathe air choked in nicotine, wildfires and the notsomuch forgotten fucking virus. Everything seems predestined to bring about my ending. Still, I stack and move about.
Be positive,
I think to myself before settling in to the purgatory of my computer screen. Be positive is poor man self help advice for just stick it through today because maybe tomorrow brings less doom and gloom.
I wonder if my brand of doom and gloom is perfect for the revival of the once-beloved fire and brimstone street corner preacher. I could spend my afternoons shouting about how near the end is or the heat-index in hell or what Beelzbub serves for dinner. The corner streets of America need their proud, debauched, countryman shouting fire and brimstone proclamations from the cages of blackberry brandy-stained incisors. If one thing is for certain, I picked a terrible time to endure reality without a little slip of whiskey now and again.
Here I am wrapped in my warm blanket of self-loathing, wondering how I can capitalism the hell out of my depression in to a viable career.
It certainly won’t be through self-help. My thoughts are one man’s trash. And another’s. And another’s.
I sign up for self-help by any means necessary. Procrustean measures included. Duplicity acknowledged and accepted if not begrudgingly.
See, this is where the blanket of self-loathing TAKES me. I know how unseemly it looks. It’s ugly low self-confidence unsightly. Collectively pushing all of my friends to offer the arms length, ‘love ya from a distance. Quasimodo’ half back pat.
My brain struggles to remember chapter three in the last self help book. It had something to do with outlook. I look out upon the empty word processor and think of how great it might look smeared with words or holes or shit or bile.
Something with texture. My look inward found me wanting in the department of depth.
Just fucking write something!
My mind screams manically. I sit by myself. I refuse to make eye contact with the shadows or their sinister growth on the wall. I haven’t slept. I don’t eat. I surround myself in towers and maneuver through their peaks. I walk myself lame in the feet as I shout positive rhetoric at the shadow people threatening to swallow me.
As my panic attack crescendos, I strike the keyboard with tears. They strip dirt from the pores on my face on their ride meekly down my cheeks. The keys run slick, making my fingertips slide in their effort to smear. I slam my fingertips to keys until the sadness is effaced and one thing is salient.
I’m going to need another cigarette and more pieces of white to smear.
