I breath in and exhale the tension.
My girlfriend sleeps next to me, face nested in locks of swirling hair amid the comforting woven blankets.
I type, on my phone. Not my preferred method of journaling, but the inspiration to empty my soul’s contents knocks.
I have been reading poetry. We read by the nightstand light, her head perched upon my chest as I speak sublime verse into the night. WB Yeats. Ezra Pound.
She retired to her dreams, and I picked up my book, Our Mathematical Universe, working my way through inflationary theories of a multiverse. My mind blurred and the words stopped reading themselves. I had to put down the book. Too much effort for midnight.
But I can’t sleep. My mind is alert.
I pick up a book of collected poetry, and open to a poem titled Friendship, by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik.
I mostly hate myself. I think myself selfish, self centered, egocentric, with it always being about me. And this makes me hate myself. Why am I so concerned with me?
I recently rediscovered that I seem to operate on a dopamine deficiency. When the neurochemical is reintroduced, my entire world changes, my tenor is restored, and my keel becomes even. This is why I must constantly seek activities and rituals which stimulate my dopamine centers.
I’ve been struggling the past few years, losing sight of my ideals, of what’s important, wading in dark cesspools and groping for stability on floating phantoms. I’m not sure which came first, the misery or my habits, but they have long been married and poisoning my way.
I think back the past five years, and the friendships I’ve mired, the impulsive choices I’ve made, seeking sensual specters, wicked wraiths. All for what? These scars run deep. The memories are my penance.
How do I correct for my wrongs? How do I make amends?
All talk, no action.
No dreams, nothing daring.
Only panegyrical pensees proclaiming my piety, those dithyrambic desires, dribbling and deadening.
It only occurred to me recently that I have been the living dead. What dreams? I can barely write, let alone imagine, let alone carve mosaics from my mind, and weave winding webs from threads into tapestries of integrated authenticity.
No. Sleep. My mind paled. My body barely supported my spirit, which slithered from day to day, like the snake I’ve been, depersonalized and depressed, inquiring into dark fantasizes of demented devices, like suspending my body from beams.
This ache became numb, and my life became eternal hell. My hell. By me. For me.
Somehow, the clouds have parted, and my life is filled with nascent dreams once again, taking form on the horizon, like outlines from a rising sun.
I can move now. My words are awake, ready to penetrate the dark mist previously enveloping me, poised to vaporize and reveal the sublime beauty subsuming all that my eyes embrace.
How to make amends? With friends?
Be the best I can be. Remind those around me that they are greater, and can be greater.
Never outshine my friends. Remind them of their greatness.
I am a shadow.
You will never see me, only my works.
I must not talk about me. I am dying.
The spirit that remains exists solely to elevate those beings around me.
I cringe at my petty self absorption.
I fall flat and hide my face.
I am unworthy.
What makes me different now?
My dreams.
Continue to paint my dreams as they’ve never been painted before. I can do anything. My will is awake. What is it that I wish to do? Show others it is possible. They too can be great.
Never rest until these dreams are made real.
Never give up.
William Dare 