A Eulogy, A Dream

I’m in love, you know. I’m in love with this idea I’ve been playing with, warming up in my mind and molding like play-dough when I’m bored, and it’s taken a long time but now it’s this perfect sculpture in my head.

It’s all these things, all these general senses I’ve picked up over time from people and movies and songs and books, and then combined with some stuff I made up myself. It’s abstract, too, so I feel sophisticated. Or you could say that it’s disorganized so I feel like a spoiled child, demanding everything my way.

Doesn’t matter—the point is I’ve got something to think about, even if the faces are pixilated cause I don’t know yet who will fill the roles. Even mine is blurred a bit. I don’t know how I’ll change as time goes on so I want to keep the image vague—to avoid being set on something I’ll never reach. Or something I’ll never be again.

It’s a feeling I’m in love with, one I’ve only ever dreamed about—a feeling of reckless abandon and the gamble and who cares, I’ll figure it out later because I have this one thing and if I lose everything else—but keep this—I don’t care.

The fuel gauge in my car always says “full”, even when it’s running on fumes. But someday, when I’m going somewhere with you I’ll pretend I forgot so we’ll break down together on the side of a road somewhere and who cares if anyone ever finds us?
Whoever you are, my pixilated paramour.

Missed appointments, speeding tickets and lost keys that doom us to sleeping out in the hall; let’s just laugh it off and chalk it all up to stories to tell later. Because we know we’re going to be ok, no matter what. Even when the pendulum it at its nadir we can run off and do something stupid, ‘cause we know it’ll be on the vault eventually. Let’s just enjoy the ride, you and I, swing unpredictably back and forth like flaming dice hanging from the rearview mirror of a 16-year-old’s first car.

That’s it; that’s the feeling. We’re already free-falling and collision is inevitable, so let’s just let the awesome rush of a thrill take us over; worry about the crash on impact cause we can’t stop it coming anyway.

I have the potential for this feeling. I’m great at denial and that’s a little bit what it is, and I think a little bit is a good thing in situations one can’t change. But usually I just come off as irresponsible so I go ahead and worry, hoping everyone’s right and that will actually help anything.

Well, people say not to worry, just to let it go, but no one actually lives that advice. And when they see someone who’s trying they think they just don’t care. So I worry for them, because I do care—about those things, about what they think of me. Maybe too much.

But I’ll survive how I can and how can anyone tell me I’m not doing it right? No one is. Living the right way, I mean. Everyone needs to change something. Some things. I’m failing in ways and so are you, so let’s make a deal: I won’t judge you, you don’t judge me. I have my reasons, and I know you have yours. Let’s be aware of our faults and do what we can to fix them, but the blame has to stop. It has to stop or I will stop; I will stop speaking and eating and leaving my room because I can’t do anything without turning someone against me.

That’s when I take out the sculpture I’m in love with; that sunny play-dough dream...even though I know it dies a bit each time I touch it.

Cause there are some times when it’s enough just to pretend that this is the fantasy—one of those misadventure games I’d play as a child in which I starred as the oppressed heroine, downtrodden but determined through unfair misfortune. So dramatic—push it over the edge and it becomes a bad novel. But one you can’t put down.

Sometimes, even if I don’t forget the things themselves, it is enough just to forget that this stuff is real.
Real, like gravel in your knees real; real like 3am in the dark when the infomercials come out with their big bright grins and their dead flat eyes, like vultures to prey on the numb souls still wakeful at this hour—we insomniacs who have so many more hours to feel the weariness that cuts down so dramatically on our hours of freedom and energy.

You stare over the top of some classic book you told yourself you’d read, stare through the screen and past the fat ladies screaming at each other, volume low and the combination of sight and sound is ironic but that irony is wasted on you, because you aren’t paying attention. You’re barely thinking at all.
Sluggish, bloated thoughts peer into your mind with bloodshot eyes, slip in a grimy claw...wait for you to turn around...and when you do they scuttle off and as they run like delinquent adolescents you hear their voices fading, “come and get me; catch me if you can, bet you can’t”.

Sometimes it makes me curious, where they go and why they won’t stay cause I really would like to get a good look at them, but I am so tired; my Ambien is finally kicking in and I doubt the chase is worth the sleep I’ll lose over it.

The fat ladies are crying now.

Time to close my eyes.