Text messages again.

Me: I was wrong.
Sam: About?
Me: Him being better for me than you, as if I'm an addict and you are a more damaging drug. Better metaphor: I am a self-mutilator and you are two glass bottles.
Me: IE, you'd both be completely harmless if I weren't such a fucking mess.

I'm not as faithful to the shuffle gods tonight. I put it on shuffle, but I skip past any song that isn't hard enough to drive my anger-- anger, I should point out, that is purely at myself, no matter how much I associate it with somebody else. I let it play a song by Sage Francis (thinking that this feeling I had that let me enjoy it, it must be how Elorza and Zack feel all the time), and then one by Buck 65 (the Buck song was not quite angry enough for my tastes, but I was also feeling incredibly, incredibly uncool, and hating myself for it, so I wanted something to make me feel cooler than I was. What's cooler than underground hip hop? If you said canadian underground hip hop, well, then, you must think I'm pretty cool right now.) I let it stop on "Unkind" by Tabitha's Secret: "Bring it on, baby, whatcha gettin' into?// Is living on pain the thing that's getting to you?// Write my name, pin it up with my picture,// say it's the only thing, 'cause I'm not around to be around." There's a song by Regina Spektor that I've never paid much attention to before, that strikes a chord with me, called "Hero": "And we're going to these meetings but we're not doing any meetin'.// And we're trying to be faithful, but we're cheatin', cheatin', cheatin'."

I listen, for a while, to the tinny overhead music that completes the awful scene as I sit in the red, lawn-style reclining chair in the annex where they sell barbecues and mulch.

Even as I've come to hate myself, I've come to love that chair. That chair is dangerous enabler. I'm breaking up with that chair.


In a conversation with Emily I have in my car after I drive home (she responded to one of the five "I'm too pathetic to exist" text messages I sent out to random friends while I sat in my chair.), I tell her "I'm going to have write on my blog, or tell him to his face: 'you have my cell number. You can have my home number. There's absolutely no reason you can't call me, and, really, I mean any time. So, if you're headed to wal-mart and you hope there's a possibility I can meet you there, if you want to take a walk sometime, if you want to come over and watch a movie, whatever. Call me. And if you find that it makes you uncomfortable or that you'd be afraid I'd already be busy, well, then clearly you're not paying attention, and anyway, that's just not as big of a problem as me spending all my goddamn free time at wal-mart for no good reason.' And god help me if I don't have the strength or the self-esteem to find some way to communicate that. I mean, really, if I don't, shoot me now, because I'm fucking worthless."

I mean, the telling it to his face thing, well, that would have suggested slightly more strength and self-esteem than this does, but one way or another, it's gotta get done.


I need to reiterate-- I am mad at, annoyed with, and disgusted by no one but myself, here. And I wish to god I was oblivious enough that I didn't have to be, but I'm not. It's clear as day that I'm assigning other people's faces to my inner demons. I'm at this weird place of balance. I'm too smart to not see the idiocy in the things I do, and too sane to not see how fucking crazy the things I want to do are (IE, punch the large bags of dog food on display...and maybe the brick walls, a little...and all the other customers.) And I have too much pride to confess to all that, but honestly, I also have too much pride not to confess to all of that. And if you can't figure out how that works out, don't worry, you're not alone, because I really don't know what I meant, either. Maybe that I'm afraid if I'm not honest about how truly idiotic I've been acting, I'll be free to continue acting that way. Maybe.


This is not his fault; this is not your fault. I am not angry, and the things that are destined to change soon, well, they haven't changed quite yet. But god help me if I find myself at that hellish symbol of misery again without having a legitimate need for low, low prices.


Also from "Hero":

"I'm the hero of this story,
Don't need to be saved."



On with it.