Choose one word to describe yourself.

Now, ask you friends to give one word that describes you.

(they won't match up)


You'll generally see the worst in yourself

And your friends...they'll generally see the good (not even the best, just the good) in you.



And that staggers me.
Contradictory (steadfastly-loyal)
Insincere (caring)
Selfish (adaptable)



I don't think I could ever be as bad as I fear I am...but I strive to live up to what my friends expect of me.

I love Rosetta

With your hands wide open
Release
(an energy)

Scatter - Scatter
energy



With your hands wide open

Renew the days we all thought
(lost)

Renew the days


Release
Revolve
Renew

Sometimes, you are lying in bed wearing nothing but your boxers about to watch a movie with your ladyfriend...when one of your housemates walks into the room. And then one turns into two turns into three. And suddenly, you are hanging out with your friends whilst you huddle under the blankets, and life is good and absurd and fun.
And then you realize...life is really enhanced by series of odd, almost unexplainable events.

I've finally moved out of the basement and into the upstairs. A smaller room. A room with a nice view of sunrise/sunset.

And I feel invigorated. I feel the urge to write. I feel the lethargy that has gripped me for several months diminishing (though this may coincide with the Spring like weather we had today).

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and it is my first Valentine's Day in....5 or 6 years that I will spend with someone. Our initial plans have fallen through, but whatever we end up doing, I'll be happy. Because sometimes, there are people that come into your life that you feel comfortable around. And you know they aren't perfect, and they know you aren't perfect, but for some reason, you still love each other. And all your fears and doubts become diminished when you are with them.

Maybe that is what it means to Love someone. When you Love someone, your Fear and Doubt fade, and they help you face a world of Uncertainty with Strength.

Memoir 1

I've always been a quiet, shy, and introspective person. I've never had many friends. And those friends I do have, I hold dearly. That being said, I've always hated being alone for extended periods of time. Though quiet, I crave to be around others. Even being a silent observer is better than being alone.
Perhaps that is why my Junior year Spring Break was so hard. My plans had fallen through, so I would be spending a week plus alone at Sojourners'. Being only 20, I had my roommates buy my three handles of liquor - Vodka, Gin, and Tequila - before they left. The 3 Wise Men, I called them, in mockery of the faith I had once held so dearly.
Knowing that none of my friends would be in town for the week, I made ambitious plans to work on several big end of term projects and papers. I was convinced that I would find the will to go to Calvin each day and hunker down in the library for research and writing. If I did so, I wouldn't have to worry for the rest of the semester - it would be a cake-walk.
Alas, the 3 Wise Men stared me in the face, I could not tear myself away from their gaze. In those days, it took much less in order to get me tipsy or drunk. Nowadays, where it takes 9 to 10 drinks (roughly half a fifth or more), a scarce 3 or four shots would suffice. So, I drank.

At first it was just in the evenings, but soon I was drinking as soon as I woke up. I would then pass out in the early afternoon, only to awaken at night and would resume my drinking in short order. This went on for the better part of 9 days. Awake, eat, drink, pass out, arise, drink eat. pass out, repeat.
Five days in, things were not going so well. I had not been outside for longer than my shortened memory could recall. The only sunlight I saw was through the half pulled blinds. And I was growing increasingly paranoid. Paranoid to the point that I had tracked down my housemates' various knives and weapons and placed them strategically throughout my bedroom...just in case.

Towards the end of the week, I tried to break free of my self-imposed shackles, and I went out to get some fresh food. During my brief time outside, I ran across my friends who lived across the street. I suggested we use their grill for an outdoor Barbecue. I said that I would provide the burgers, this being at the point in my life when I had just developed some culinary talents and was convinced that my burgers were superior to anyone else's.

The cookout happened later on in the day, and I was in bad shape. Six or seven days of straight drinking had been hard on my system. Though it was an unusually warm Spring, I was shaking. Jaundiced and pale, I stood over the grill. I stood my ground firmly for an hour while the five or six of us at the cookout ate burgers and drank soda for an hour before the sick feeling welling up inside of me was too strong to ignore.
I excused myself as politely as I could before running back to my house. I threw up everything I had eaten in the past day. The burgers were still recognizable, though, thankfully, everything else was muddled and obscured. When I was done, I collapsed onto the bathroom floor and shook violently, partly from the strain of the vomiting, partly from the lack of sleep/exhaustion, but mostly from the fact that it had been nearly 24 hours since I had drank anything.

I collapsed into my bed and spent the next 48 hours there, only venturing forth for water and bread. I played movies on my laptop, but even the effort of watching them was too exhausting - I had to lie facing away from them with my eyes closed and simply listen to the sound. I was broken. My week long bender was at an end.

When my roommates and friends came back and asked me how my Spring Break had been, I lied. There was nothing else I could do. I invented stories of productive days spent working on papers/projects and reading books. Days spent under the warming Spring sun. Biking under blossoming trees.

Not wasting away, wasted in my basement.

I am a fallen man.
I am a broken man.
I am a failed man.

Day after day, I sit holed up in my room, in the basement, like some kind of subhuman troglodyte, wracked with panic attacks, depression, fear, trepidation, hesitation, doubt, etc...

Slipping....

...Slipping further....

(If I loved this, then why does it make me sick?)

Drinking to escape the thought of failure. Pride holding me back from trying my hand at anything. Too afraid to move forward. Too petrified to look back.

Stuck in the middle. And sick from the mirror.

(From a smiling drunk to the embarrassing lush)


Hoping that someone else will dig me out of this pit of despair that I've dug for myself. Waiting for something, anything other than me, to get me out of this self-destructive cycle.

And now, I can I only pray that my honesty will goad myself into action. To move past my fear and on into life. To do something, anything.


(This is the time, if it were up to me now.
This is the time, we can rise from the ground.
This is the time, hold onto me now.)

I excel at the mediocre. Even my alcohol consumption/disease is middle of the road - too strong to fully commit to alcoholism, too weak to stop myself from drinking.

(Today is the day that I see myself for what I really am...)

So, I wobble on half broken crutches. Both wanting to give in fully to the anesthetization of drink and to struggle on for the sake of friends, family, and self.

No one ever said that Life sucked this much. That the choices you had to make were so hard. (a poor and pitiful and childish excuse). That you might have to choose between the people you love and the things you want to do. The uncertainty of it all.

(I'm washing it down. Watch me fall.)

And one day you wake and realize that you aren't who you thought you'd be. And you wonder "Was my childhood image of myself naive and unrealistic, and am I just a realist now? Or am I really a disappointment to myself?"

(With a graceful fall did you waste it all?)

And you love others more than you love yourself. And you pour yourself into them, telling yourself, "If I can love someone else enough, I'll be worthwhile."
And you pray you don't succumb to the weakness of your parents, that you don't just give into the daily grind of life. The day-in day-out existence.

(Do I hear you folding up to fear?)

And every day you die a little more inside. Die from your own apathy and inaction. Die from stagnation. Die from fear. Die from hesitation. Die from all the ropes that held you down - whether real or imagined. Died because you made nothing of yourself because you were too afraid to commit to a path. Frightened by the options in front of you, you chose a different path - the path of inaction. The path of burying your head in the fucking sand like a coward. And the spark of your life did not go out like a brilliant blaze...but a fucking smoldering ember sputtering in and out, in and out, in and out of life until finally it sputtered to death.

(We can't say no.
Not anymore.)

this is how i feel

I keep on searching in the city streets,
I'm wide awake and I'm unafraid,
All these ships upon the violent waves,
I can't sleep until you're next to me,
I keep on searching in the city streets,
I'm wide awake and I'm unafraid,
All these ships upon the violent waves,
I can't sleep until you're next to me,
I can't sleep until you're next to me,
I won't sleep until you're next to me,
I won't sleep until you're next to me,
I won't sleep until you're here with me,
I won't sleep until you're next to me,
I won't sleep until you're next to me,
I won't sleep until you're here with me