nolan_void

After about two hours of alternating between push-ups and crunches I stood looking at myself in the mirror, at the body of clay that I have been given to mold and whose form can never be more than mortal. Once upon a time I did this to look better for someone else, for women, but now I don't know why I do it anymore. I think it is to feel something, to hurt a little bit and remind myself that I'm still alive. For a good long while now I've been trying to out-think my feelings and it made me numb. Sometimes all this thinking and trying to figure out things that are so simple that they define themselves just drains the life right out of me. Thank the heavens for blessed pain; its the best cure for the common thought.

I was listening to James Taylor when it all broke loose. My father used to listen to him; I don't know if he still does. I haven't seen him in a long time, and I've tried to keep as much distance as I can, but I still dream about him and I still yell at him and feel guilt. In some ways I think that is because he trained me to feel guilty for the slightest thing, but I'm not so foolish as to pawn off the responsibility for my own feelings on to him.

The song that played, the James Taylor one, was Fire and Rain. I don't know what it was about that song, about that one line "Oh I've seen fire and I've seen rain"... Something about it just crippled the house of cards that I've built up in my mind, the one that I've been trying to live in to get away from the world. The line came like a strong wind, the kind that comes before a storm. I've spent so long trying to quiet everything inside of me, trying to cultivate silence, that I had forgotten that the most sacred silence is the kind that comes after the storm.

It hurt, as the wind raged and the rain fell and the roof flew away and the walls were toppled. It hurt, but it felt better than numbness. They were the sweetest sobs that have ever escaped my chest, I think.