masochist

masochism of the mind, emotional masochism, psychological self-harm. it all works.

no, there's nothing really wrong with me but at the same time there is. i can admit there's a problem with dwelling on emotionally damaging things, but what if they're not intrinsically damaging? what if only the twisted context of your life makes them that way?

what should be the happiest moments, the fondest memories, spoiled by the fact that there will never be any more. like seeing the sun, basking in it for a day and then being forced to live life in darkness. the memory of the sun becomes bitter until it's poison in your veins.

at the same time as you take your only solace in the memories, you wish they had never taken place. because feeling the caustic burn of the bane is better than feeling the nothingness of your void without it.

 it's not for some sick joy behind the pain but because letting go is too hard. and there's no guarantee it will even make us happy if we do.

all we hav left to us are the mementos of lives we half-remember living and the memory that life was once better.

it doesn't ever really make sense to dwell on them but that doesn't stop us.

greatness

we don't do great things anymore.

as humans, as a species, we have begun to lose our aspirations to become great, to rise above the fray and be known to all others as someone who did something of worth. that will be remembered. we have lost our belief that years from now, people will remember our names because of something that we created, that we said.

and why should we believe that we'll be remembered? as a collective, our attention doesn't span more than across a couple weeks. we are quick to forget and eager to move on. we don't like dwelling on things that make us stop in our tracks, that make us uncomfortable or, heaven forbid, that make us think. we prefer to delve into the swell of the internet and drown ourselves in the endless deeps of the frivolous drivel of reality tv and idle celebrity gossip.

we used to concern ourselves with things of import. we used to be honestly involved with the way our country was run and the state of our economy because at one time we felt that there was something that we could actually do about it.

there was a time where we strived to be more than ourselves, to think beyond what will come the next day. once, we read the works of our modest modern philosophers and saw how it applied to us, how the stories were our own. we began to recognize our folly and to make reparations.

but now, we look only to fill the time. to recycle the works of ages gone in order to make some abomination unworthy of actual existence. there are nuggets of gold among the rough, tiny lights that struggle to illuminate the heavy gloom. and in truth, we still read those stories, study those wisdoms that those before saw as greatness. but to us, they are the voices of the past, screaming at us. and so we drown out the noise. because it's only a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

we no longer believe that we can do great things because we don't see it happen anymore. we think they're a thing of the past and everyone tells us such achievements exist only there. but no one dictates our own destiny but ourselves. no one can tell us we can't do something.

but still, we don't do great things anymore. and it's our own fault.

madness

sometimes insanity doesn't really exist. just normal people with normal thoughts, normal feelings. normal lives. but then, like a cancer, something changes and the normal becomes more than normal. and too much of anything can quickly turn to harm. it becomes too much.

interest turns to infatuation. infatuation turns to obsession. obsession turns to madness.

it spins in a vicious cycle of letting go and embracing, holding on to the insignificant and remembering the tiny moments of peace. refusing to let them go and then hating them for leaving you. leaving you so alone.

it's the turn of a coin, tumbling through the air, always falling, but never caught. 

it seems so sad to think of it, so unfortunate a state. pity for the mad ones. 

then i realize.

i've been mad all along.

chaos

elements of randomness dominate much of our lives. the universe relentlessly fills existence with tiny choices that accumulate to the most immense and daunting of decisions. at those moments, everything that lies in the past of our lives has culminated to that one instant where the decision presents itself. who we were has determined who we are and in kind who we will be, but none of those people ever being truly the same.

the organic nature of the universe forms around each of the choices of every single person in the world, the fluid tendency to shift and warp making every person invariably connected with every other person in existence, spanning even across time. we all affect each other, most often without realizing it and entirely ignorant of how far a single touch really goes. 

and in turn the universe reaches out to touch us back. the constants work to keep our lives spinning as they should, as they have before or at times it will let us taste a new life to see how much further we can go, how much more we can be.

we are most richly rewarded when we give in to the forces beyond ourselves, when we turn our lives over to luck or chance, chaos or faith. when we give our lives to the turn of a coin or the raging seas around us or to God, we are given opportunities to be more than ourselves, to be a part of something greater.

the universe is perfectly crafted, the minute components like clockwork, ebbing and turning in perfect harmony. 

it's funny how often we forget that...

Ghosts

we follow footsteps in life, treading the paths of ones already far gone.

we follow hoping to know them, thinking by some measure that we may walk their journey for ourselves. we try to know the ghosts to whom these prints belong. but we're chasing echoes. those whose paths we trek are long dead, they live with the face of of another and have gone on so far. we follow strangers.

they have gone on so far from me, these ghosts i once knew. i desperately try to follow the way they once went, but that path is theirs and gone with them and never will i trod upon it. i will never again see my ghosts. no matter how far or long i echo behind them i will never ever catch up.

so i trudge through winter snow with only the mementos of another life and the memory that i once lived.

abnormality

some people are weird.

but that's actually very acceptable by my standards. in my eyes, those who fall into the middle of the spectrum of insanity are granted their small oddities to separate them from the mundane unremarkables and the extreme crazies. they're set up to stand apart and show others how the world could be.

besides, they're more fun.

treasures

there exist in life a few, rare moments of pure joy, perfect happiness.

it's in these moments we relish more than any other. these instances become sacred, shards of time trozen in memory, pure and untouched by any corruption of world and circumstance.

perhaps the most precious are the memories of a loved one. the treasure that is the touch of an angel.

the rarest memories are the ones rife with complex emotion and interaction; those filled with the comfort that defies the hurt and the innocence that pushes past jaded thought.

it's in these moments that we could live.

moments that either define or destory us.