Can't Help It
I've lost my faculty of wonder, and you've burnt it out of me like a sinner. The cigarette stab that smolders at the very core of my being grows bigger and bolder with each day, creeping outwards to singe fingertips that try so hard to grasp at but thin air. A leaf it is, but set aflame before ever touching the deadened earth. Your pallid, lifeless fire crackles and consumes me, friends. You are but enemies yet unrecognized and deserving of nothing.
... that was the summary. Translation?
I've lost it. I really have. And I feel that I've been hiding it so long that it just... walked off. Left like an unsatisfied lover. Two beautiful windows but no heartbeat. Just a shaken fist and a cab ride to nowhere. I am but skin to my eyes.
... This may need more translations than I thought.
The existence of such people are few and far between. I am one and so is he, and perhaps another that I know of. Cynics of humanity, ready for something better. But what? I'm tired of searching. The people that I interact with every day have, like I said, "burnt" this wonderful infinite feeling out of me. I'm extremely sensitive to social situations and criticism, much more so than they are, and it affects my entire existence. One particular instance, one negative thought directed towards me, and I spiral downwards. I use you as the excuse to learn how to truly think and act.
What I end up forgetting is that everyone is different. There's no true way to act in a situation; what comes natural to some is a nightmare to another. I don't embrace my own feelings and fears; I only try to take everyone else's actions and blend them into some socially-perfect conceptual person that I begin to model myself after. In a way, I am never myself; just bits and pieces thrown together in shambles. I have her blindness for compassion, his obsession with images, her lack of a voice. Or maybe it's my own lack. Fuck people. I can never tell who I am when they're around.
However, I also have tried also to shut out the negative aspects of being a human from my model. Focusing on one's self too much, approaching the wrong group of people, awkwardness, and many other downsides have been "deleted" from my "being." I use phrases such as "well, I'd never do that" and "but I'm not that kind of a person" in conversation to lead you to believe that I'm NOT acting that way, even when I am. "Disclaimers" are the death of me. They only make me feel more guilty for being human and being the way I am. I only do this because I notice these flaws in people and don't want to be around them because they are that way. So I avoid being that way to the extent where I feel guilty for even acting that way a little bit. It's a tightrope walk while being pulled in all directions. I'm falling into fire.
And I'm already being egotistic in this post by my use of the word I. See? Guilt perpetual and unescaping.
In reality, I am a very babyish person. By trying so hard to use these disclaimers and focusing more on becoming someone else, the toddler-esque emotions and feelings never left my head. I am an insanely jealous, unbelievably insecure, unnecessarily guilty, and overly melodramatic person. The life lessons that I was supposed to be learning throughout the years were learnt by this "model person" and not by me. I saw everything two steps ahead of what it really was, overanalyzing far beyond what need be and using this botched image to further alter my behavior. What a life.
Now I am nothing. Too far behind to catch up, but too far ahead to feel connected to others in any way possible. This cursed mind, this damned lie I lead.
I have decided that my mind is too easily molded by others' behaviors, so I have to make do and just hide until I can be alone. I don't have any true personality that I show in public: I am only you a million times over. In my head I don't even have a voice. But what is the reason for my incessant need to be accepted? Why? I have a dream to be lost in the woods, to run naked and not feel that I can brag about being that special and spontaneous. But why should I feel to brag about something so innocent and pure? What is the point? I would only learn that I'm being a "weirdo" from some uncaring, unimportant soul and then feel the need to erase the part of my being (because it surely isn't myself) that had a love for special and spontaneous things. That would be what would happen, I can assure you. Confusing, but so is everything else. Fuck it.
So that is me. My mind is infinitely more active than the norm, and it's slowly eating me alive. I doubt I'll ever be happy in life and be able to fully realize it. I only see my own faults because I am unable to see beyond you. You. All of you.
I crave being alone, but I'd be lost because nobody would tell me who to be. I need it, but it's killing me. It always will in the end. I will never crave company.
So, self-analysis over. I was hoping it would help me gain some of that wonder back, and I think I succeeded somewhat. And the wonder that I mention is, now that I think about it, just the voice that I receive when I am around people like me. I realize I must surround myself with these kinds of people, people like me that have already molded themselves permanently into beautiful, opinionated people. I feel that every day, my clay is slowly starting to settle into one of them. So my entire goal at this point is to avoid rocking the boat and to wait until college, when the 1,700-odd student body will all fall into their own niches and I will not be forced into theirs. I will blossom alone: fully, completely, and alive.
Until then, here I am, surviving. What a wonderful three more years I will have.