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My Profile
Retro-retrospection - 2008-10-06
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8:07 p.m. - 2005-06-05
Joy and happiness, of course. I've lost the ability to feel either. I can't find it. That mindset, the ease of heart and spirit which allows the good to grow. When I was an inmate in my mother's house I was scared all of the time. Being frightened was just a way of life. Yet I was confident the world outside my childhood gulag was full of good things and wonderful people. I believed that completely. I guess I thought there wasn't anyplace to go except up. Like that dippy Anne Frank, I also believed people were inherently good. So while I was scared and quite sure I wasn't worth the oxygen I used, the rest of the world and the people in it were as fine as paint. I went about with the expectation that whenever I left my mother's house I was going someplace great. I just knew the people I'd meet were talented and kind and did amazing things. People's lives were presents to open. I never met a single person who didn't bring me a gift. An occupation I'd never heard of. A joke. A new word. They had things in their homes I'd never seen used that way before. Every minute spent outside the narrow confines of my mother's house was time spent in Joy. For certain I was confused a lot. Abashed at my awkwardness. Ashamed I brought nothing with me. Nothing I had was anything compared to everyone else's stuff. They could whistle and walk on their hands and build soap box racers and shuck oysters and milk cows and knew oh so many things. They'd been to fabulous places like jazz clubs and Akron, Ohio. Because I believed in the wonderfulness of everything, everything was wonderful. Oh sure, I knew bad things happened, but it didn't budge my faith. I was happy. I lived in a world of wonder. To other people I must have seemed somewhat of an idiot. I asked questions all the time and greeted the answers with wide eyes and delighted smiles. And more questions. I was naïve. I never understood when people tried to manipulate me. I didn't see it. Often going along happily with whatever scheme they'd set up to make me look like a jackass and walking away unscathed. I was a very unsatisfying dupe, too clueless to even get the 'joke'. I got older (and a bit wiser), yet my inner landscape was still the same. I had bouts of sadness. I'd get frustrated. Depression claimed a goodly bit of my time. Still, those were my personal demons, when I got outside myself I always, always found good. I was happy. How could I not be? Now I'm not. I am not happy. Happy hasn't been in my emotional vocabulary for a long, long time. I am judgmental and harsh. I do not expect to find the pony in the barn full of manure. I do not accept people into my life with gladness. There’s only the sour tang of cynicism. I look at happy people and wonder how the hell can they be such fools? God, nothing is good. The world is full of sharp edges and jagged broken ends. People aren't kind, they're idiots. Idiots who are cowardly and selfish and they enjoy being cruel. I give no quarter. I cut no breaks. I extend no mercy. Not to them. Not to myself. My heart is poisoned. My spirit is a tight little ball of grief. I wake up angry and disappointed and fall into my bed at the end of the day no more unburdened or enlightened than when I began it. I miss myself. That shiny silly person who saw opportunities and surprises everywhere. I miss her and haven't a clue how to get her back. Sometimes I don't even want her back. Not really. To take up the mantle of faith is pointless and will lead to disaster. I'm afraid. I'm only going to fall on my face again. To allow hope is to invite the shiv in my ribs. God, don't I berate myself for all this bitterness! Constantly. Endlessly. If the world is full of pigs and misers and abusers, there's none who are as awful as I am. I've become a mean person. Hard and quick to zero in on flaws. Angry. Scornful. Brutal. When did it begin? This curdling? Was it when I began to use my looks to get my way? Was it when I had done enough things and owned enough stuff that I wasn't always the low man on the totem pole? When did I leave off being a student and become a critic? When did I stop believing in anything except the surety that people always act out of self-interest? I have no answers. I remember no crisis point I can go to and say, "Aha! this is where it all went wrong!" When the fuck did I become my mother?
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