What makes my brain run the way it does? Strange mechanisms at work. Beyond my conscious control most of the time. Universally-leaning. That metaphysical riddle for me to unscramble. The great cosmic joke just waiting on the punchline. Perhaps eternally. A girl cannot live on tragic romance alone. Not at all, really. She needs real nourishment, actual physical affection, something vitamin-rich and soul-satiating. Something to build a real life on. Not just some novelistic fantasy a la Sylvia Plath. Maudlin and bathetic are just fucking fine for a far away recollection of a past life, but it can never sustain a present. With absolutely no hope for a future. That's why so many writers are alcoholic suicide cases. Tragedy is their only currency. It's their most sacred creative catalyst. Pain is the rawest, most unfiltered emotion to drive the pen. Everything boils down to pain. Active avoidance or fervent seeking. There are too many pitfalls to morbid curiosity, the by-product of sadomasochism. I continue to punish myself. The ultimate sadomasochist. I have to be the best at absolutely everything, don't I? A perfect sadomasochist. Karma is an interesting mistress. People are so quick to attribute positive events to their own hard work or more likely their sense of entitlement, feeling they deserve good things, as if someone is up there doling them out to the worthy. I suppose the exercise of free will can get things rolling in one direction or the other, but success and status is pretty much luck of the draw, deeming success and status seeking behaviors worthless endeavors. It is an illusory and antiquated notion that one can achieve their "dreams" or "goals" or what-have-you simply by old-fashioned hard work and perseverance. It's a business model dreamt up by the Walt Disneys of the world, a childish notion that good things come to the good and the bad guys eventually get their come-uppance. If only the wheels of justice moved so swiftly. And more importantly this internalization of positive events is completely socially acceptable, encouraged even. But for as quick as people are to internalize positive life events, they are even quicker to externalize negative outcomes. Not many want to attribute adverse events to their own nefarious actions or sinister thoughts. And those few that do are considered mentally disturbed. Only the neurotic, emotionally-scarred headcases, like me, internalize negative events, as part of our self-inflicted internal torture regimen. For which we are sent to doctor upon doctor and given pill after pill. Why can't you just self-medicate to the level of functionality like the rest of the world? We neurotics have far too many emotions to handle; they seep out in dysfunctional gloops. Glop-gloop. Glop-gloop. It oozes. Glop-gloop. As it starts to pool around my toes in a stinking, sewage-ridden blob. Full of love and pain; it festers. The flies begin to buzz about the bubbling muck. Soon the rats want their cut. It turns gangrenous and necrotic as it further putrefies and Stilton-like veins of mold form across the surface. What evolutionary purpose does it serve? Our we simply evolutionary defectives? One-offs from the species? Or are we the pinnacle? Evolution run amok, taken to its breaking point. The limb finally snapping under the psychotic weight. The brain has evolved beyond its own good. It's forsaken itself. Much like man discovering nuclear power. It's grown too big for it's britches. There is no suitable containment. So out pours neuroses. Even selective breeding has done the same. Whole industries were born out of the neuroses of domesticated animals, dog psychologists, horse whisperers. Do we just see ourselves in these animals or is it over-evolution striking again? Dolphins, elephants or great apes in the wild seem to suffer as well. Anything with any higher functioning or advanced brain capacity seems to develop emotional problems. Mo' brain, mo' pain is as a succinctly and flippantly as I can convey. Vonnegut's big brain hypothesis seems totally credible (see Galapagos). Horse-shoe crabs have made it millions of years because they never outgrew their reproductive purpose. There wasn't anything to think about. In fact, I've never seen nary a horseshoe crab on a therapist's couch. But we'll blow them all to hell soon enough, nonetheless.
Yet negative emotions persist. Melancholy, anger, guilt fear. What purpose do they serve? I find myself asking time and time again. One purpose that guilt and fear serve is to forbid me from living like a crazy person. That's something. It keeps me in check; guilt and fear are life's cattle fencing. Keeping me in the pasture, for some semblance of a life. Some semblance of morality, some semblance of happiness. Of a life that other people seem to lead. My head is full of these little snapshots of what a happy life looks like: a young couple picnic-ing under the shade of a grand oak on a sunny spring afternoon, a grandfatherly figure carving a picturesque Thanksgiving turkey with a big, shiny knife with even bigger, shinier eyes, a child blowing out the birthday candles on his billowy white-frosted cake against a backdrop of cheering adults, an incandescently lit Christmas tree littered with meticulously wrapped packages, while a fireplace roars beneath a mantle dotted with handmade stockings. Fireworks exploding overhead in the July heat, illuminating the faces of delighted children sitting cross-legged on an oversized red and white checkered blanket, or an elderly couple holding hands as they meander down a rust and gold leafed path, smiling at each other after all these years, relishing each satisfying crunch underfoot. This is my foolish, nostalgic, black-and-white movie, Rockwell-ian, Americana idea of happiness. Anything less than that seems meaningless and trite. Silly, I know. I wonder if anyone else, like say under the age of 75, feels that way. Should I even care about fulfilling such a specific and ridiculous dream? Probably not, but yet I hold out some bantam shred of hope. Pervasive idealism is hard to deal with on a day-to-day basis. So few understand. No one understands fully. I've given up on being understood fully. But damn, I've been close. God, it was so beautiful and harmonious once. I could almost taste it. It was powerful, more powerful than either one of us was prepared to deal with. I know it scared him. Fuck, it sure scared me. It all changed in an instant, without warning. One omniscient look, the locking of eyes across a crowded room, that's all it took to seal our fate. The universe smiled between us. Poetically succinct. The rest of the world needed not exist in that determining moment. There was only us, perfectly in sync. We had it all right there, in the lavender-scented, apricot-hued effulgence. Just the right amount of sweat and passion. An overwhelming amount of love. My heart ached and lurched. I trembled. He trembled. Tears welled in my eyes, but they refused to fall. For it was too wonderful a moment for even a touch of sadness. It was the most right I've ever felt. The universe whole-heartedly approved. The universe smiled between us. His heart pounding out of his blond-grey lined chest. My fingertips dancing lovingly among the brush. I lived to count the freckles on his arms as they wrapped around me. Never wanting to be freed from the prison of his love. I'm a hopeless case, I suppose. Anyone professional with any sense has already moved on to more receptive patients. More often than not, instead of his arms, I'm locked in the padded cell of my macabre sadomasochism. Never letting go of the moonlit memories. The oxidization of brass leaving a rust-colored stain on my barely-beating heart. Never to be cleansed of his sad, watery-blue eyes. The way his mouth curves over his teeth to form the slightest lisp. Jesus, that barely perceptible, sweet, inescapable lisp. I had forgotten how strong a narcotic love can be. God, the exquisite, immeasurable, insufferable pain I longed for. La doleur exquise, my darling. You have to die of something. What better than love? Real gut-wrenching, blood-boiling, mind-bending, vomit-inducing love. The hardest drug of all. The one you just can't quit. There is no rehabilitation. Diamond-strength, nuclear-powered, surface-of-the-sun, hotter than the hinges of hell kind of love. That's where true addiction lies. Addiction for the emotionally flaggellistic. Drugs for the cerebral cutter. I want to see those hot streaks of crimson flash onto my porcelain flesh, so tight and supple with youth, yet slashed and burned with the cynicism of experience. I've lived a thousand lifetimes in my head. I want to wear my wounds like badges; pin them to my uniform as commendations. Survival commendations. People should take more pride in what they've survived. Those are the ones who should be rewarded by that great wheel of chance. Look what I've been through and yet I managed to drag myself out of bed! I have yet to jump in front of a train. Let's celebrate! An un-suicide party. I didn't put a gun in my mouth today! Where's the limbo pole? Congratulations, you made it another pain-soaked day without pulling a rifle on a random crowd of people. Kudos, man! You didn't go kill-crazy; here's a gift certificate to Crate & Barrel. Treat yourself to a couple of those really fancy throw pillows to take your rage out on. You deserve it! Positive reinforcement works. A crooked and stretched smile is forming across B. F. Skinner's corpse somewhere in the depths.
What is happiness without pain, anyway? How can we appreciate light without shadow? How can one discern warmth without first experiencing frost? If good exists, so follows evil. Everything has its natural opposite. Positive and negative charges. To live in the neutral is not to live at all. I want to experience the full range of human emotions. Why was I given them to experience otherwise? What is their purpose? Surely, it's not just to keep Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline lining their pockets. It does follow that that is one reason negative emotions are frowned upon, for as long as they are condemned, the patients will continue to pop their pills, so those yachts can stay afloat and those jets stay in the air. Why is anesthetization so much more socially acceptable than experiencing negative emotions? Medication, be it self, or prescribed just perpetuates and prolongs the cycle of pain. It pettifogs the brain, so you can't intellectualize or rationalize the problem for any lasting relief. It only temporarily treats the symptoms without attacking the cause. If you allow yourself to feel the naturally-occurring emotion, you can confront it head-on, and work through. That takes true courage, and it's wholly honest. There is no need for delusion. And self-medication only works for as long as you swallow it. All that pain floods right back the second the drug dissipates, therefore you take another hit, and another, and another, until there is nothing but that ever-fleeting drug-induced stupor. All you've done is kill time, at best. At worst, you've killed yourself or any remaining facsimile of it.
People really loathe sanctimony. Especially when it contains a grain of truth. No one likes to be held up to the light. They aren't the beautiful prisms they purport themselves to be. They are ugly, contorted, self-absorbed, fungus-covered, swarthy, volcanic rock. No one ever likes what they see in that mirror. It's hard to stomach a cold, hard look at yourself. Where are those redeeming qualities you thought you possessed? Just another middle-of-the-road, unremarkable, terrible asshole. Barely a memory. No one wants to be a dime-a-dozen kind of chap, but someone has to be. Delusion is the opiate of the masses. It makes the world go round. Otherwise, I guess we all would be lying in mental hospitals getting shock treatments. There are a few sapphires of existence, but they are rare, exceedingly so. They twist and writhe and push themselves for the sake of others, for some greater good, but to no tangible reward. Most often to their detriment. These tragic, genuine, beautiful creatures are the only unsung. Justice is propaganda. You know why some people punish themselves? Because the world is terrible. It's full of terrible things; hate, murder, evil. And some poor sap has to absorb and process those terrible things. Emotional migrant workers. There is no landfill for pain. It has to go somewhere. The photosynthesis of pain is a necessary torture. Without it, how would the rest of us breathe? The sun shines for thee.
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