Another Piece of Writing

[Brushstroke]

Make of it what you will.

I can't say I have a title for this. I simply started typing one night in April of last year as thoughts flitted through my head. I've been thinking a lot today and I figured I'd post this. I felt awkward, having the file just sitting in my folder where I keep all of my other ramblings. It is difficult for me to explain why I post this other than to say it seemed awkward for me not to post it somewhere, so I chose to post it, for once. As I have already said, make of it what you will. That's all any of us can do, right?

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Dear You,

As I looked through her glassy eyes I wondered what would happen when it was my time to die. If I could make its dark waters calm with but a stare like her. That moment distraught throughout me, and I hid beneath myself till now because that’s all I have ever really had. And its dawned upon me, sinking me into a final decision, an act that would commit me to the one thing I cannot fear because of its unknown depth. I’m upon these banks and feel no calm.

When I looked at her face I saw nothing holding on. An apathy of her soul that finally consumed her, relinquishing a flame that had stood her up before the world. I asked her what it was like, what laming sense produced now inside her, and she just stared at me with a peace that was absent of emotion. What was she thinking as its mutation distraught her mind? What would it be like when it was place for me to feel her pain? To know that the following breath would be my last, that my flame too would flash out before the banks of an unknown crossing.

I prayed to God Almighty for her. But looking into her eyes I knew she had abandoned the light. It took me forever to understand, but I feel now the same grace in absence, just as her now dead thoughts. Why is nature this way? Why must we contend a fruitless fight with death? I think she saw immortality reveal itself, and it was not as she had faith towards. Yet still that calm in her eyes reflected out towards me through her stare, and I know why she felt all right by herself. For I too now feel an echoing loneliness that I wish I would have known long ago. I feel better than I ever knew was possible, even now at this closing time.

They had told me this life was just the beginning. That my loyal heart would cross me to the body of a newer world, one free of the pains of this. That I could be loved by one whose care unbound infinitely over the whole of time. But one who had impregnated heartache within me for the selfish actions of prior years. One who allowed my friends’ suffering before her selfish fall. I felt no other world setting in her sight, in the grey tint of that morning’s sky that stretched out across the chapel. Her pupils shook me that day, and I felt like she was trying to tell me something with her cold skin and lifelessness. Speaking to me through her eyes’ blank calm. But I have not come to terms just yet, and I still grip onto my life with feeling, yet my bodies' sleep comes soon despite my hold.

Sadly though her dying heart is not what inspired me to write upon these pages, and, actually, it’s far from it. My friend would not have wanted the end I have now concluded. I too will soon feel regret if it has not yet aroused itself in me. My eyes shine now and I am happy once in a long while, but I believe I take my final moments to write this for the sake of others’ minds to not feel the disposing will that shed inside me to create my poor decision. Maybe my death can capture all, my dying mind being a source for those to know a happiness I before had just abandoned.

To what is this death I lack till then soon come? I hold no true answer, only minor propositions and inane ideas. No wisdom to its unknown border or possessing inevitability. I simply do not know what lies beyond, and, for this reason, I contain no dread to its coming hands. And my death is on my own knives, my own waning hand. But I cannot lie when I say that I dread the passing of this single world, of my few friends that will strive on with their effort to continue. I must write fast, think to the speed of light to furnish my message; else I may be overcome with my painless sleep before I wish.

What of non-existence as I approach my condemned fate? It’s hard to gaze across. That these thoughts and pages will no longer be, that I, myself, will cease to be. But you, the reader, will be left this letter I wrote just for any of your eyes, but to me it shall no longer be as it is, or be it at all. It’s incredible, truly incredible to judge upon this fine line of darkening contrast with the end; for me anyways. It seems easy to conceive a God to make it less...unimaginable. To make the unknowable into definition, into a truth. But its becoming too intricate, too man-made to judge the absent Being of the beyond, and I can no longer draw myself upon the organized to see something that shows no realness, no entity. Or one that would condemn us to pain and suffering because a man and a woman acted upon what makes us human, what makes us different. One that would make things harder because it wanted a bunch of tiny voices filled with the sorrow of awareness to praise its deeds. But, simply; I do not know, I do not care. I don’t care about the beyond, I care only with the fact I now leave my boulder at the bottom of the hill.

Perhaps if God is there it is better if we did not look out up to him. Would it not make us see and fight against the death that we must produce ever more harder? Do we not waste effort looking heavenward for his absent word? Do we not deny the grandeur of this life, this singular world, our unscripted plays, when we charge out that this experience is but one of despair and sin to the evil nature of man? Who burrowed out to proclaim such things? To bring a pessimism onto this world as it burns alive amid our own self-inflicted wounds? Would it not make God have no difference as I acknowledge that I am my own? That I simply know what place I tread throughout? I say that even if it was before me, if his transcendence produced itself now throughout my limbs, that it wouldn’t matter.

And what was the decision that made me kindle my life now to ash? Well, it was a number of things, all of which satisfied me in such a way that I would make this untimely plunge. Each brought me further to the brink, to a harboring of hopelessness deep inside my views, and, looking now upon my experiences with those events, I looked through a side of despair I have just now escaped. These tiny voices of my own mouth have made things much harder, caving me into the nagging vices of life. Not recognizing at all the satisfactions I could have held if I could have only helped myself when it was productive. And now I stand before the wall for my rash decision, and my regret is dawning upon me.

Its been this way forever, or at least, as long as I’ve seen the way I have. It was a present even that final day upon my friend’s floor as I thought I heard her...she riddled her silent whispers into my eyes‘ doors. But what has coursed me towards swallowing the pills now dissolving in my body began in a transforming angst yesterday, in probably the saddest day of my life:

I messed it all up, and I tried helping her, but I cared more than I knew she did, and I fear she merely used it as an excuse to get away from me. You said you would never forgive me, but if you read this memoir of a lonely guy; please forgive me, because I really did care for you even when you said you never wanted to speak to me.

I was foolish...and now heartache for what I’ve done to you writes itself across every one of my features since the moment I hurt the one you loved because he hurt you. Now all I have is your hand in but my memory, and your tears that wet my own. I can never leave you behind like your own turning back. I’m sorry it’s over, and I’m sorry that you left me with such ease after you swore you wouldn't leave. You possessed me, and you were the only one who ever tried to set me free. But, even you couldn’t break the locks I have too late hammered off. I’ll miss you up to my final dream, and, maybe, you can feel amorous. Just know they will never care as I do for you.

Never had I cried in my life. Even she said I didn’t even hold tears when I entered into the darkest of places, and the brightest. Not even at her death did I shed woe from my innards. And I believe last night, waiting to escape into my unreflected thoughts, I proposed the idea that has now become all too real in my belly. Things changed about my life so quickly, so rashly, so wrong as she walked away from us. And, suddenly, being a wallflower lost its perks to me.

When I walked down my school’s hallway this morning all I gazed was a sadness equal to my own. A hidden despair that creased across everyone. It didn’t discriminate upon race, upon social structure or upon their clique. It was there waiting to spring upon them at a moment of recognizing their limitations; just as it did to me.

It was a persona we have learned to hide from others, to bury it away in fear of what they might think. Rapping it up as unappealing drabble, it’s the seed I now open upon these pages. What if they could know these thoughts that slide away? What might have been done if they could have known this sheathed plague that’s killing us? We cannot escape. We’re all quietly dying, self-created suicides; why has it become so?

The thing is; it seems I alone seem to know, who sees this as it is. Watching as it robs us of joy. I pass into an abandoned night as a single observer. I mourn as it takes each expansive life from its beholder, and it has driven me to brink upon the water. Maybe though its supposed to remain hidden...for the reason of what I felt when I crossed paths with it during today’s waking morning. Maybe this sadness should remain lost in my imagination; but I fear it’s too late for such ignorance to fathom me. And maybe that angst is something more than just the lesser feelings in life. A being that gives living something realer than even itself. Maybe the despair is our humanity, shaping us into one gigantic identity as individuals.

And I’ve realized this knowledge is unavoidable to me...because I have thought about it for my entire life. And only now do I see how complex it all really is, and it chills me with revelation I wish I never had to produce. What if I had never undergone these questions that produce my somber awakening? And I have most certainly awoken to see anew. These philosophies of life and struggle now give me answers, and my previous theories tear with my new insights--if only I could have felt this sooner. The thoughts themselves though scare me, and I wish I could be abdicated from their hold. To have a surgeon crack my skull open and let me be asleep for once. But I know I cannot be cured from my contingent disease. I have condemned myself long ago to its creation, and just recently does it free me, erasing my child’s eyes to reality. And to think it was just today! It’s all happened so fast.

Now I’m spread to the point in which I swallowed hard, to my steps into my room and the stealing of my father’s sleeping pills. Just before I had been assured to take action with my moving hand and chasing tongue.

Of the few friends that I hold dear, two connect lips with each greeting and moment they are together as we, the others, watch their content attachment. Upon the cold ride home they sat before me, their book-bags thrown beneath their feet as they embraced in spirit and touch. Her blue hoodie was placed beneath his holding hand, their faces parted not as they showed caring comfort, and I could but watch from detached woe. I must have been overwhelmed with wallowing thoughts, for I saw not the beauty drenched out before my sight. Only a notion that I felt no love as their yearning hold laid out cinematically in front. And I chose to put still my beating heart in self-loathing of my place as I soothed the shadow that sat inside me.

Regret now pushes up around me, no words or raining hopes can save me now. Too late I now see upon the free-side of that despair that punished me heavily. Beauty holds inside my slowing heart, and for the first time I feel satisfied. It’s as if I had been dead my whole life before my growing joy filled the mingled thoughts of me. I’ve awakened to find I haven’t lived at all beneath the weight of worry and agonizing fears that have never had any real relevance. Was this life I will soon not know a waste?

I guess it’s not fair, but whatever; I should have approached things better. A joy in every possibility has revealed itself to me, and I feel terrible because I can’t experience it a bit more before I sway my eyes beneath my lashes. I might as well try to enjoy things even despite the fact it might certainly not exist anymore beyond.

What are these feelings that hold me about my skin? Not a dread nor sorrow from curtains of my dooming sunset fill my heart. Will you pass too through this night? Or will an arising spring court your mind and notions? I still feel, I still care, even amid the loneliness when I sat in my room alone waiting for calls that would never come. This crossing isn’t much more than living, much more than being before.... Except that an invigoration replicates ecstasy inside my comprehension, something I wouldn’t have ever felt if I had not plunged into this choice.

I don’t want to die, I really don’t. Not because I’m scared or because I fear the beyond or my ending life. But because I know there is something worthwhile after-all; and that’s because I am all my own, after all of this. I think my friend was trying to show me this, to make it so I could be my own before I left; unlike her. To replace the emptiness she parted through with a self-created infinity. Not with a calm or with a stare, just as her, but with a lasting piece to stretch out across the whole of the world. Can it be that this is truly the bitter end? Or is death merely my life gone without me? I hope you can be better than I, that you can grow as I shrink into obscurity. In months I’ll be unknown to the crowds, to the views and thoughts of those who never really saw me in the first place, but maybe you can fountain a depth that only you can bring forth. Good luck! And, before I stand out waiting for the ferryman among the countless others who have chosen just as I have.....know there is a beauty that requires your attention to notice. You can never look too close.

Love,

Phil

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So, there it is. Again, make of it what you will.

~Phil

[Ron G.]

This is great narration and perfect at forming emotion although a bit disquieting to read...which means it did it's job well.

Good work...keep it up!

[brideofjc]

I take it then that you desire to become an author someday? Very well written imo

[sirguessalot]

there is a perennial wisdom that says..."the dying are our greatest teachers of spirituality"

if nothing else...they remind us

deep thanks for spilling this, phil

and posting it here

ive read it a dozen times now

...almost speechless

[lindyhopper]

That is some impressive writing there Phil.

Lots of good stuff in there. Great lines... perspective... expressive thoughts and depth of feeling. Seems you can paint a picture in more ways than one.

You do it well in this format for sure.

[Shellon]

Have you been writing anymore, Phil?