Thursday, March 10, 2005

Eyes

In my poetry, I designed a world similar to mine, but probably very different from yours. The images painted and repainted in my head drive me and my characters to thoughts and actions often out of place in your world. I pace, oftentimes for hours, arguing with the factions in my head, and the animated memories of people I've lost. People appear in front of me in the appearance for which I remember them most. I see my Dad in his army uniform, staggering around drunk and demanding me to bend over. I see my brother stirred to action by a cruel word in a white t-shirt. I see Christine's uneasy smile framed by red hair, my mom cooking chili in the crock pot, and Jaime's eyes. The rest of your descriptions are too long to list here.

In my world, the eyes are literally the windows to the soul. When I look into someone's eyes, I see a whole person probably more my imagination than truth. Jaime's eyes beguiled me; I never fully found out who was behind them, or fabricated a person in my mind to match my perception. Sometimes, I wander away in my own eyes reflected in a mirror; my memories play back over and over again as I quickly lose track of time while sifting through thoughts best left alone. Sooner or later, I'll meander back out of the window and return to this world I loosely share with you. I want to forget and move on like the rest of you seem so able to do, but I cannot let go. My memories tug me back, and sometimes pull me under. It would serve me well to not dwell in my thoughts, but that becomes increasingly unfeasable as more and more memories insert themselves in the rotation.

Since I finished the first draft of Stitches, my epic, my condition has done nothing but worsen. For small periods of time, I can put on a good show of recovery, but the whole time I'm just deluding myself. I cannot trust any emotion, thought, or memory as genuine. I want to dismiss them as just a dream, just foolishness, or just a hallucination, but I cannot; I have no control.

Some people tell me to survive and hold out hope for a new drug, a new treatment, or a new anything else. I've long since known hope to be the last refuge of the foolish. Madness comes and goes as it pleases, it doesn't plop in and flush out of my system like the contents of a pill. It's unfair and impossible to ask others to help share my burden, but repeatedly I haul that unfair impossibility to the doorstep of everyone who cares about me. The journey would be less if I just bore it alone without comment or complaint, but I'm always seeking companionship. Most people just dismiss me, but some pause to chat. The chatting never lasts long; it's too painful to watch me struggle. That's why I write, you know. I can't think of a better way to make people understand than the words dispensed at the tip of my pen. Those words will bring me nothing.

The cruellest act is to give me false hope. Don't fill my thoughts with counterfeit love, or unreasonable optimism. We all know well that I am not getting better. I will fill the Void inside me with the same excrement that drives me to write these brief thoughts; more poetry will come, the burden will be heavier, and there will be another person left behind, unwilling to continue with me.

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