The strength to carry on

Some people have called me strong. That I'm brave to have dealt with my life with such calm. I feel like a fraud for it. Strength isn't the reason I can keep going, and treat my trials as if they're nothing. I can deal with it all because for once in my whole damn life, I stopped caring. I stopped caring if I live or die, if it's easy or hard, if it's wonderful or not. I still don't really care. I just do whatever I need to do to feel normal. That's all I ever do anymore. I stopped trying to have aspirations and dreams and fears and nightmares. Every day I wake up and all I want is to feel normal. I go through extra effort, and I exercise, and I drink down bottles of pills and shoot hormones in my veins not to live, but just to feel normal again. Just to feel like everyone else. My radar has shrunk from the decades ahead of me to just the next week. The next day. And what I'll have to do to make sure I don't stick out. That I can make it just one more day without people feeling sorry for me. Without having to feel like whenever I go there's a huge mongoloid following behind me screaming and shouting and throwing a tantrum to draw attention to me.

The downtrodden

Don't give us pity. Nobody wants to be reminded constantly of the things that make our life difficult. We have our own moments when we're alone for that. Give us care and attention. Just treat us like anyone else. Don't be a savior, just be a friend. It's the greatest kindness you could possibly show.

The Silence Between The Notes

I used to think about dying every day. But not exactly thinking. And not exactly dying. I thought about dying everyday in the same way you think about living every day just by breathing. Just by eating and drinking. You do those things just to continue to exist. And similarly at the back of my mind, for everything I did, for every joy and every pain and every excitement and boredom, there was always one question. Why? It's easier to forget to ask why when you're happy. Or at least forget to care. But it never truly leaves you. And at night when all your physical needs have been met except for sleep, it's the only thought left in my head. Why? Why am I here? Why can't I just be sucked into my bed like the rest of my dead skin and hair. Just cease to exist. Why can't I go to sleep and just live there. Not in dreams or nightmares. The time after your eyes shut and your brain flickers off but before your imagination begins. Where you don't exist to the world and the world doesn't exist to you. There's no pain and no joy and no future stretching out in front of you and past weighing you down. As nothing as the space between the stars hanging in the night sky. Eternal and stateless. 

Generation α

With each passing generation, we try to pass on the hate we have for each other. Our ignorance and our insecurities. We load it up on our children like backpacks for their first day of school. But somehow, with each passing generation, they learn to drop some of it along the way. They learn to live with more acceptance, more tolerance. We don't see the change amongst ourselves, but it's there. Across decades, across centuries. It's the only evidence I've ever seen for the redemption of humanity. To keep alive the belief that one day we might just be okay.

Tree Rings

I wish beauty wasn't defined by genes and makeup and exercise. But by how beautiful your soul is. And not the idea of goodness and badness. But beauty of the soul, which is a purely different idea. That you got dimples in your cheek if you really happen to love knitting or going cave diving. That your eyes would become deep pools of black ocean water if you knew everything there was to know about astrophysics. That whenever you smile, you'd have another laugh line for every dog and cat you've ever owned. Or your cheeks would flush if you happen  to be really good at listening and keeping secrets. Or your hips a little rounder, breasts a little fuller for all the years of maturity you have, not the years you've lived. It feels like physical beauty ends up being the opposite of all those things.

Hospice

There are people that are so pure of heart, gentle of soul. People who have been dealt unlucky hands. They're born without sight or hearing. They get cancer or AIDs. Their organs and muscles just give up on them. But they still give do much. Have positive spirit and strength. It's so easy to see why they deserve more. Why they deserve all the help and attention we can give them. But what about the people who aren't so nice. That are just not great people. Just sort of nobody's. They lie awake and alone in hospital rooms slowly dying in their husks. Strung up with tubes and wires. With resentment and anger in their hearts and ignorance in their veins. What do they deserve.

Be still, be calm

You shouldn't worry. Even if you're unhappy now. Even if you're upset, jealous, or angry. That you can't find love or you can't hold down a job or your mother hates you or you have no friends. That somebody, everybody, has it better. Because they don't. They're dealing with the same dumb tired bullshit you are. They have nothing and it's not enough. They have some things and it's still not enough. They have everything and just because they've grown numb to it, it feels like nothing. It's in our nature. It's humanity's way to never have enough. To always struggle. If you've had no hardships, you'll find them. We all have a capacity for heartbreak we need to fill. A quota for despair. But we can only take so much. And we ignore the real worry. The real fear. And so the earth continues to slowly die. And our ozone continues to erode. And the animals die and turn to radioactive dust and the trees turn black and suffocate. And we go to sleep with the same petty shit living heavily in our hearts. So don't worry. We're already dead. We're already in our coffins, and we're being carried those last few steps to our grave.