kid_hideous

who the hell am I?

its the question du jour, everyday. lately it seems this monday through friday, nine to five, is draining away all sense of myself. the rows of isolating cubicles, the "friendships" hammered out in emails and IMs in which uncertainty seems as ever-prevalent as entropy, rendering every sentence a site of possible double meaning, the pervasive normality of my coworkers...and coming home, though a source of solace every night, seems to do no better. all the nights in, watching tv and movies, stolen moments to read (for most nights, the thought of perching again in front of a computer to write - although these are my own words, my own stories - seems so awful I can't bear to think of it), knowing I'm thousands upon thousands of dollars in debt and that it is, perhaps, time for me to grow up - it's all a little bit terrifying.

i don't want to grow up - and what does that even mean in this world?

sometimes it seems growing up is merely a matter of widening and contracting circles of intimacy around oneself, which in the end, no matter how expansive or close, come to constitute who we are. as children our world is our family, soon we enter into a circle of friends, a family selected instead of born into, and for a time it seems we have truly found ourselves. then, perhaps, we find love, and the circle closes down upon a world of two...

then, sometimes, we elect to make a family, and then the world expands, but only a little, and now all this small circle are bound by love and genetics.

and yet now, in which moment I love a girl who wants very much to marry and start a family, i find myself thinking only of myself. when i kneel down before her as she lays upon the bed, and bring my lips to the soft pink involutions, the world closes to a size I love...a world, in fact, that I love but often wish to leave, a circle that sometimes seems a noose.

and sometimes I think that for a person who is passionate about an art, any art, the circle of intimacy that is his or her world need never be any larger or smaller than that composed by him or herself, and the art, that that circle is forever closed and all outside it hang as small and distant stars, caught in an orbit utterly and entirely alien.

then again, one has to wonder - in the waning days of my life, should I chose to be alone with my words - will I think that I have wasted my life? all the characters, all the images, are as so many reflections of my own face, as are perhaps one's lovers and children, but all too familiar, and unable to offer the comforting touch of another human being. will i long for the children I might have made with this woman? will i view my marriage day as a perfect dream i let slip soundlessly through my fingers?

and then, on the other hand - if I do marry this woman, and begin a family, begin the LIFE my culture tells me is the only one - will i not regret the words I never wrote? i think of the times in our long relationship when we have been apart, for school and jobs have separated us before, and my creativity flourished. In three months away from her I wrote the eighty pages of a novel, a project that a year with her has only seen gain another twenty pages. then again, it was while I was with her that I finally discovered the true love of poetry that I always knew I possessed. and yet this is not something i can share with her; those projects and pieces that fascinate me seem like gibberish to her.

i can't imagine losing her, and yet, for perhaps in the first time in my life I feel strong enough to be alone. and don't i owe it to myself to see what kind of life i can make without having to always take into account another's thoughts and feelings.

this then, is what it all comes down to. have i ever been myself? i could reduce my life to a history of lovers and best friends easily; in fact, this seems to be the only way I could define my life. I have been what i have been because of lovers and best friends: whoever i have chosen to sacrifice my hours to has stood as a little god in my life.

i think perhaps it is time to be done with gods.