I want to know the answer to that question. When your family is broken, a shroud of what it was.

I want  to know what I’m supposed to do. How am I supposed to be happy being alone? How can I pretend that everything’s alright?

I know the physical pain. But eventually all of that will fade away until it’s only a dream. What about the other kinds of pain? Where it hurts so much to breathe, to think, to feel? That you want to stop it all.

I know that they call me a harpy, a bitch, an ice queen. And all of that is true. But do they even understand why? Do they understand what it’s like to be betrayed by two people you loved? No. I still love them, even if it hurts but sometimes love is suppose to hurt. I know no one else understand that. That love isn’t supposed to be beautiful and perfect. It’s supposed to hurt; it’s supposed to be this intense agony that makes you almost insane. It’s supposed to make your heart bleed until there’s nothing left.

Sometimes I think it’s worse that they know what I think. Because to make everything worse, I have to be around the people I hate/love all the time? That they can feel my pain yet they ignore it.

I wonder why love is supposed to be so fucking magical. I’ve had enough of magic; I just want my life back. I think there must be women before me who know the truth, that love burns, leaving burn marks on your skin and heart invisible to everyone. That love not only affects the woman but everyone else connected to her.

This is why I’m like this. The constant burning, it feels like I’m burning to death. But surely someone would notice that I’m a human flame made out of broken skin and bone. Of course they don’t because they can’t see it, can’t feel the heat that licks away my skin. That made me someone else.

I wasn’t always like this; on fire. I used to be pretty, use to be normal, use to be like ice. But now I’m on fire and ice does nothing to help.

I wonder if it will ever cool? If I’ll be ice someday again in a world filled with fire.

I want to be blind, and deaf that way I’ll never see their happiness but I’ll know it. I’ll always know it.

But mostly I wonder when I’ll get a happy ending, where my castle isn’t in flames, where the happy couples don’t watch as I scream for help.

Cover my eyes,

Cover my ears,

Tell me these words are a lie…

Teenage Angst by Placebo

Shine the headlight, straight into my eyes.
Like the roadkill, I’m paralysed.
You see through my disguise

At the drive-in, double feature,
pull the lever, break the fever
and say your last goodbyes.

Since I was born I started to decay.
Now nothing ever ever goes my way

One fluid gesture, like stepping back in time.
Trapped in amber, petrified.
And still not satisfied

Airs and social graces, elocution so divine.
I’ll stick to my needle, and my favourite waste of time,
both spineless and sublime.

Since I was born I started to decay.
Now nothing ever – ever goes my way.

The End

Insomnia, be damned!

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I live so much inside my head these days, amidst a sweaty panic attack, and full-blown mental claustrophobia. Freedom is a lie, and professors are all whores to the imagined future. Freedom is a lie, and we’re all whores to the imagined Future. I need sleep and rest and calm. I remember when life was so simple and I didn’t care about anything. Those were dark times, but at least I could rest and breathe. Now, the darkness calls to me, tempting me back to the inky blackness. It seems like ages since the last time I fell, so long ago that I cannot even remember it. The attraction grows stronger with each passing second and the shade over existence grows darker. I feel myself losing my grip. Reality is becoming distorted with each passing moment replaced by the next and nothing lasts longer than an instant. So here I lie, preparing to take the plunge.

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How one can perceive their freshman year to the point where it is just a fact of life, and not a self-centered media event, where one can say, “Hey, looky, looky, looky, I’m in college, I’m living the high life, I rock! You suck,” is beyond me. When I was in junior high school, I was thinking about college, and how an education like that would be. When you are young, you have to remember that picking the right college is a matter of convenience, intangibles, and environment.

I will divert from the college situation for a moment to talk about preparing for that. It seems that everybody is focused, and stressed about grades. Everybody wants to push him/herself too much just to please their parents, and their family, and their background in which they were raised. In other words, they want to put themselves on a low pedestal. When I remember how I had a 4.0 GPAs at my high school, I wonder, “Am I really that smart?” I made all A’s and just sat on my ass all the time. Now, some people may think this one way and respond with, “Well, if you get a 4.0 GPA in high school, all AP classes, scholarships a bunch of universities, you are sure to be the best leaders of our nation.” And I say to that, “No, no, no, no, no, that is not true.” Why? There are a lot of reasons why this is not the case.

First of all, it doesn’t matter if you graduated from Harvard, Community College of Philadelphia, or even the School of Hard Knocks, if you don’t do well where you work, get good raises, get the rhythm going, make everyone satisfied and proud, it’s going to hurt you. This seems already beaten, but there have been many cases in which “perfect” high-school students unravel in college (I will explain college later, and the pitfalls). And there have been cases in which Ivy League-educated politicians are corrupt. They do not like their job, simply because they want to do it for the money. That’s why you see politicians getting on the news for money laundering this, racketeering that, embezzlement this, scandal this, impeachment that. Take, for example, some of the recent Presidents of Mexico prior to Vicente Fox Quesada’s long-awaited usurpation, if I may call it that. I don’t know about Carlos Salinas de Gortari, but I know already that he was badly despised by his people. That’s why he went to exile. Then you have Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon, an Ivy League trying to swim in a world that demands more attention to people who are nowhere near his political standing. He couldn’t survive, because he was at an unfair advantage.

Look at the history of our presidents now. A huge number of them are graduates of an Ivy League school, generally Harvard or Yale. Bill Clinton was a Harvard graduate, while our current President, George W. Bush, was an Elitist. Both had to survive the tests of governing the most powerful nation in the world. Bush is still trying to pass the test, after 9-11 and the Iraq attack. Look at Governor Gray Davis, a Stanford and Columbia grad. He’s trying to fix our economy, but is only hurting it, especially our education, though the budget cuts.

These people that I mentioned are examples of how getting the job done the right way could have saved their reputation. They are only doing it for the money. The people have been brainwashed, in that respect. To be the best, work hard, and live the American dream…that has been tainted.

Anyway, back to high school. The commencement ceremony, after analyzing the situation, was nothing more than just a mere handing of a diploma holder (with no diploma, boo!), some corny songs, and some speeches. Later that night, I had a graduation party at Roxy. Apparently, that was a bit of a mistake. For the first few hours, I was having a blast with my party, but midway through, I lost track of my friends, and was completely lost. I couldn’t track them down, because there were so many of them. It was like one of those ecstasy parties that Dennis Rodman hosted. Girls looking like Shakira, having oversized tits, bumping, grinding, humping…as a women’s libber, I felt like they had been downsized to this. (If only I could have had my mouth on one of those…but they wouldn’t allow that there, morons…) But on top of that, I felt I had wasted my time there. By the time I got home, I was basically tired and angry.

Then, I had to head on to the Freshman Experience. You know, in an environment like college, you have to sink or swim in this; no one spoon-feeds you. You have to be committed to getting the information, and getting the work done. That’s when the fun factor starts kicking in. Of course, even though I got a bit of exhaustion and fatigue, I started to find myself again. I had found new friends, and was becoming more social.

Speaking of social events, there was a fire on my floor in my apartment building and it was a classic college bonding moment. I met up with someone that I haven’t had the chance to really talk to this semester. We huddled up in the cold and talked for the whole time, while they put out the fire and cleared the smoke.

In High School I thought I knew all the terrors and annoyances of fire alarms, College proved me wrong. Maybe it has to do with dorm life, or people allowing too much (pot) smoke to accumulate in their rooms, either way I soon learned the true severity of fire alarms.

It is interesting to note that there are usually never any fires.

The fire alarms had a fondness for going off late at night, normally either during the middle of a good party or right when you were drifting off to sleep and have an early morning class. They also go off much more often when it is cold outside. Perhaps because the number of people who smoke inside their rooms increases as the outside temperature decreases?

I shudder to think of the number of times I had to shuffle outside in the middle of the night to 30-degree air. Eventually one learned to take the time to bundle up under several pairs of pants, coats, and a blanket. You also got very close with your dorm mates at this time in the attempt to share body heat.

Now I am getting really random and me thinks it is time to depart.

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Usually, I don’t sleep. I like it. I like staying up and talking. I don’t need sleep all that much, although I like to dream. I wish night was longer, and I could stay up forever. I feel closer to the universe every minute that passes. I want to put down the feeling on paper, but sadly I can’t. I want to draw. Draw me, the earth, comets, snowflakes, telephone posts, anything. It seems like I’ve been thinking for one hundred years and think is all I’ve been able to do, but I can’t thing straight. Does that mean I’m thinking crookedly? Isn’t that kind of a bad thing?

Tonight is different though. Drunken. Exhausted. Can’t write. Energy drained from the screaming running dancing cheering. I barely remembered what I had to do. Day four and already I’m forgetting what I promised myself, but I remembered just in time, right before sleep swallowed my brain. I want to sleep. For once sleep seems too far away. I am snuggly in my sheets but the cruel wind I can’t help but imagine is here, is keeping me awake. My head feels heavy and my eyelids are weighing down. I’m borrowing minutes of wakefulness, while I have long outstayed my welcome in the conscious world.

Then, today I had to get up and have other tests done. I gave 4 vials of blood, had an unltra sound, got a shot in the same vein that I gave blood from, and got x-rays. It was a very long day. On the up side, I went on a shopping spree with my mom to make me feel better.

I am exhausted now, so I am actually going to sleep at a reasonable time!

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The people living there are aliens in multi-colored smocks, running around speaking only in acronyms, wielding strange machines with blinking lights and foreign whistles. So strange and foreboding they seem, most of us start or end our lives in these places. They can be houses of great joy and love, or they can be places of immense sorrow and despair. As children the majority of us fear this great looming place, as we learn early on it’s a place we go when we hurt. Though as we grow older many of us cling to that association, and avoid this place as much as possible.

Hidden in the cracks of this white fortress of the wounded, is happiness. It may be small and hard to find, but it is there, among the frequent visitors chatting with their attendants. It’s among the grand-children coming to visit with balloons in tow. It’s among the new mothers, shining beautifully at this being they’ve created.

Pain is also here, whether it be the deep emotional pain of the loss of a loved one, or the momentary pain of a needle point piercing the skin. Such sadness can grow here, in the shadows of doubt and the loss of hope, and as humans we always seem to take more notice to the darkness rather than the light. We define our lives with the pain we feel, and since the hospital is so frequently the host of it, we often leave it changed in some way or another.

Sometimes, we may find the sorrow and the ache to be too great. We imagine it might just swallow us up in a dark tidal wave, leading us down to drown in its depths. But what so few of us realize is that the darkness, the pain, the sorrow is not something bad. It is a natural balance of life. Dark and light, sadness and joy. Do not fight the tide as it threatens to swallow you, but embrace it courageously, feel it deep inside you but do not let it overcome you. It may steal from us a small piece of our being, but with that small part we connect with the billions of others that have felt the waves of sorrow and have lived on. For as all things, this too shall pass, and we will look back and appreciate our time in the light more deeply than ever before. Often we find that only when we’re sopping wet and frozen to the bone, we realize that we have taken our happiness, our warmth, for granted.

I take solace in the happiness here in this foreign land, the moments of laughter and light I receive from the wonderful people here. In this micro-universe, they are the ones who remain. They alone stand and bear the sorrow and the happiness, the pain and the healing, and they do all this and more, day in and day out. I will leave this place, and I will be a changed person. Hopefully a better person, and one who appreciates the value of a ray of sunshine.

Do not fear this place. It is a place of great transition, a place of life as well as death, and we should never fear the yin and the yang of the world. One does not exist without the other, and people do not exist without happiness and sorrow, without pain and pleasure, without darkness and light. And when you stand where I stand on the shores of the blue oblivion, remember, light is not far off if you just hold on.

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The Beethoven of the dead roses.

Everything sits still, in place. Perfect at this time and moment until activity starts up and the apartment becomes a bustle of laughter and screams. The mirror in my bedroom sits quiet and comfortable as it sleeps. Tomorrow it will be flipped and broken, smashed to pieces as I throw a bottle at my reflection. My friends of insomnia, I greet them again as I sit here alone.

The dripping of the broken sink, Act 5. The stillness of the royal fruit bowl, a class act of art. Like the black spot on the white canvas… people actually pay for this shit.

My therapist says I should take more medication, relax more, exercise more, and work more. Tell your doctor you have insomnia and she’ll give you a schedule for a thirty-two hour day and a prescription for sleeping pills. The truth is that if I told my therapist about the clicking clock, the dripping sink, the royal fruit bowl, she’d have me committed.

Today, or yesterday I suppose, I chose to tell my therapist about the first story I ever wrote. It was about a bad game of Russian roulette. She stared at me from across the table and asked me how I felt.

Fine, I told her… fucking marvelous.

Last week I told her about the enjoyment I get from late night supermodel shows. And she asked me if I had a history of schizophrenia. The first day I went in and she asked me if I feel disturbed. I said no, I just love throwing money at some big shot, expensive therapist. The truth is, I sit up every night, listening to my little dining room orchestra. Maybe tonight we’ll hear a piece by the squeaky window sill. A dramatic interpretation by the sofa lint. And I tell my therapist, no… I’m not squatting. No, I’m not crazy. And no, to the best of my knowledge, no one in my family ever played bass for Metallica. The questions are as constant as my midnight shows .The truth is that for every petal that falls from the wilted rose,

I’m thirty seconds older, not a moment wiser, and only minutes away from my death bed.

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