Oh Wow, Hello.

For a little while, there was all the things we talked about and all of those things were love.

There was a restlessness we equated to lack of love, to missing love, and oh, god, I am so tired of talking about love. I am not here to talk about love because I don’t seem to know what it is and I don’t know where to find it and I am tired of making up solutions to answer these questions.

I want to talk about dreams, I want to talk about the real things that might make you happy that are also things you can control. I want to talk about the core of you, the bones and muscle and insides of you. 

If you’re lucky, which I think you are, you have a passion. You never call it your passion because that sounds pretentious and difficult, but that’s what it really is. For some it’s sitting in front of their computers and trying to stretch out their thoughts into long, elaborate, pretty words. For others, it’s television or paint or numbers or putting their hands in the dirt or some shit. It’s the REAL GOOD you found between being a child who wanted to be a pop star and an adult who just wanted to pay their bills. It’s the burn in your stomach you forget about when you think too hard about your heart, or your brain, or why you should maybe go to the dentist. Gut! It’s the something you are on this earth for, not the somebody.

Remember you were put here, maybe, to make an impression—a billion particles that have the chance to make something of all of it. Remember you are a billion particles and not a missed chance with an idiot boy or a paycheck or anything else that happens again and again. Really, it’s kind of like eating breakfast on a Tuesday—it’s forgotten until it isn’t and only then you remember how damn good it is.

Today, I woke up and I walked around in the daylight and I realized how important it was to choose an iced coffee in the sun and the sight of other peoples dogs and to simply be out in the afternoon—without the skin tight denim of night, without the stressful drives to work, just a lazy lull. I think I wrote an entire something in my head about the cracks in the street and the bite of egg yolk and the confused calm I always feel at 2pm on a weekday when I have the chance to. I write a lot of things in my head that never make their way to paper, and I think it’s funny and also terrible that these things float around somewhere I can’t find them 2 hours later. Then, I am okay with being a lot of things I put together that I can’t always remember, but always love when they happen. I also thought briefly about how much I wanted somebody to sit with while we sat in our own heads, and also how much I liked both long and clipped sentences. So.

But sometimes, oh sometimes, it is so much better to think about the real dreams. The stuff that gets your motor going, the stuff that you used to think about before you thought about love. I’ll call it passion again, although that word still kind of kicks me a bit.

What I mean by that is you have this in your hand ALREADY. It’s there, in all the times you are by yourself and you are wrongly using those times by yourself to think about the stuff you don’t have. Love is hard to find, okay, but love is simple. There is more to life than what makes hearts beating—there is what you have for yourself and what you build for yourself and what you can hold in your hand when everything else goes through like sand. 

Let all that is inside of you get you through everything else. Let it pulse through your veins like fire, let it move through you like determination and spit and all the things you want to have for other things. Let it be the moving force in you, and let the rest come later. Become the best thing you can be in a million ways other than somebody else and circumstance.

It will be the things you dream about when you remember how to dream.

If the world ended tonight, everyone knows we’d end up on the roof. The roof is where you go when there’s fireworks, when you need a glass of wine in silence, and when everything is over. There would be vodka for me just when the fires started. A real display. I’d throw the empty bottle thirty feet down because really, who cares at this point? 

In the hours before, I’d eat a twenty dollar bill. I’d ball it up and I’d eat it goodbye. See what you’ve put me through, all these years? I would let it know what it’s put me through all these years by EATING it. I’d kiss my computer and then savagely break it because that is just the frustrating relationship I have with money and technology. Kick, kick, kiss.

Also, I would do other things. I would lay upside down and see how long I could let the blood rush to my head. I wouldn’t clean my room, I’d throw my clothes around like confetti. I’d listen to the songs that made me remember everything. Ice cream. I’d get three brain freezes in a row, I’d wipe my mouth with my sleeve, I’d refuse to use utensils. The television would be off. Maybe I would kiss a stranger just so I could say something like “kiss me, you animal!” and I would also grab his collar. I would hug a tree or a person or myself. Maybe I would run down the street screaming, and then the screaming would turn to leaps, and the leaps would turn into as fast as I could go, as fast as I could possibly go. There would be real good kicks to walls, and scratchy throats, and I wouldn’t think about whether or not my love handles were noticeable in this shirt at all. Not even a little bit. I would make plenty of good noises, final sound bites in a universe that would be no longer. I wouldn’t look in a mirror. I’d take the biggest bite. I’d stomp. I’d falsetto. I’d try to laugh so loud and I’d hold somebody’s hand.

Also, I would do a lot of other things, like thinking. I wouldn’t think about crowded bars or the smelly sticky corners of a Friday night, or the forty dollars I wasted on 6 beers and a bad time. I wouldn’t think about 8th grade, or the lady who walked real slow in front of me at the mall and I was like “JESUS CHRIST BITCH, COME ON” and that was in my head so she didn’t hear me. I would think about the East Coast, and then I would think about the West Coast, and I would think about little dots of people that I knew on those coasts and I would feel good about that. I wouldn’t think about long days or pop music or paper cuts but I would think about the word fuck. I would think about every meal I ever loved, and every person I ever loved, and I would think about planes. I would think about people, my people, most of all.

Of course, I would have to tell these people some things. I never told people things I should have, and now would be the time to reconcile this mistake. I would wish I had done it sooner. I would send texts to every corner of the United States and I would not in any way be rude, but very nice and very warm. I would hope somebody would confess their love to me so I could write back “about time, dickhead.” The things I would say would include

You are the funniest thing to happen to me I miss you My days were stupid good when you were in them I should have visited you more often You hurt me Damn you might be the coolest You made me the best kind of fool It’s too bad this couldn’t happen I hope you’re having a swell time You are a wonderful person You are a lovely friend See you later okay I think about you a silly amount I love you I love you I love you But they are not limited to those things.

I would think about the ocean and how I wish I lived closer to it. I would think about water. I wouldn’t think about the end, or after the end, but I would close my eyes so tight my eyes would start to see those tiny black and gold dots floating around and I would imagine those would be my particles exploding into every little universe.

Then I would go to the roof of course, because I already told you I would go on the roof. I would sit silently on a lawn chair that would obviously be there and I would think “this was a good run,” and maybe I would think “I should have done so much more because I could have, and I would know that if the sun actually rose tomorrow and the world didn’t end…”

I would get up and I would clean my room and I would say things I meant and I would dance to Selena Gomez on my bed and wouldn’t care if the neighbors saw. I would cry openly in a movie theater. I would run as fast as I could until my chest hurt and I would say I love you and I would high five the guy at the dive bar and say ‘how about that, huh?’ And I would be happy and grateful and oh so not as pissy as I usually am.

But I don’t have that option when the world is ending. So I would sip my vodka, mixed with diet 7up, out of the glass with ice, and I would wonder where the hell all this time went by, and why I never saw it going.

Of course, the world isn’t ending, but you never know when it might.

Let me begin this entry by apologizing to any and all handicapped persons who may roll into the Starbucks I am currently occupying, as I have taken up residence in the one area reserved just for them. Let me follow up that statement by saying that technically I am handicapped as I am recovering from a pretty invasive surgery I had done this past Friday. I’ve spent every day since rolling around on my grandparents couch, loaded out of mind on oxycodone and valium, bossing my Grandmother around in some type of Valley of the Dolls pill-ridden haze. “God Dammit I said SAMOA flavored ice cream. You know I FUCKING HATE THIN MINT!” This conversation was followed by an outburst of hysterical shoulder crying on my part. Today is the first day I’ve garnered up the strength to put on real pants (jorts!) and haul my rehabilitating ass back to Columbus.

My point is that while in recovery, I had a lot (too much) time to think. This tends to be a dangerous situation for me to find myself in, as I am convinced that I am clinically insane. None of my thoughts were exactly crystal clear, but through all of the haziness and netflix watching, I did come to one very upsetting conclusion:

I never say what I fucking mean.

If I counted the amount of times I went without saying how I really felt on my hands, I could simply clasp my hands over my mouth and let the 1,000 other phantom fingers float somewhere in space. 

Funny enough, it goes without saying how much I really don’t say anything at all. Ever. If you were an outsider (i.e. not my brain or my best friend) you might never see it. I can be really fucking loud, sometimes. I raise my glass and I can laugh and I am social and I make jokes and I seem like one of those ‘sassy pants boys who probably shouldn’t call himself sassy because that term is typically reserved for middle aged women and viral videos about gay best friends.’ My secret is that I don’t. I’ve got a heavy suit of armor in the disguise of a trendy jacket and and an old knowledge that sometimes people are assholes. Or worse, simply don’t feel the same way you feel. You wouldn’t know this, you wouldn’t ever know how hard I bite my tongue. Somewhere along the way, emotions have become weakness to me, for I am the most equipped of islands. Islands don’t sustain themselves on “here’s what it really it is, buddy.” It sustains itself on Lord of the Flies Piggy murder and stuff. And silence, always silence. The truth is, I find emotions to be an annoying burden: if I feel them in my head, why do I have to go the extra mile to express them? Haven’t my emotions ever heard of rejection? Of disagreement? Are they stupid or something? 

The first time I felt rejection was probably when I was a kid, but kids are precarious and obnoxious and don’t let things get to them because they are constantly adorable. I got rejected from cliques I so desperately wanted to belong to. I got rejected from school plays. As I got older, rejection raised its mighty sword in the form of high school: everything sucks and everybody hates you. I battled it to the best of my ability and with braces and glasses and a slight weight problem, of all things. I think I lost the battle somewhere after graduation (without the dental work), when I was finally tired of what was to be known as “putting myself out there.” I built a comfortable little box of sarcasm and sat myself in it, never to be seen again.

The problem is, we make it seem like expressing ourselves is akin to standing at the edge of the world with no bottom to see. It’s the end of the world. It’s awful, no matter what the outcome. We encourage others to do it so we can test the waters on what it’s like, we are brave with everybody but ourselves. So I began to shut my mouth, and shut it always has stayed. Shut up, mouth. Keep talking, brain.

I spend a hell of a lot of time with things on the tip of my tongue. The moment where I could let it all fall out lives at the very point of my mouth. It’s caged in my lips, where all of the many wild things are, and it ain’t coming out any time soon, buddy. You don’t need to see how vulnerable I can be, how much I can think about things, or how much I can wish for the plummet to the unknown. I hear it might be nice there. I hear we miss 100% of the shots we don’t take, but we also technically DON’T miss those shots, either, y’nah mean?

I have stopped setting fires to the things I feel. I go home and I spend hours listening to music and drinking wine and promising myself “next time.” I light the flame and let it extinguish, and this is precisely why we relate these things to fire. Fire burns only for a minute in our minds because we’re not forests and Smoky the Bear ain’t got shit to do with it. It’s a god damn sparkler. It goes away unless we keep fanning the flames. I wake up and praise myself for not being brave and there’s something very wrong with that sentence.

I wish I could be real weird with it. I wish I could be stronger skinned about being bolder. But that’s risky- that means fighting the zombie apocalypse and realizing you really fucking suck at it. That means having to move up and on.

If I say nothing, nothing happens. This used to be a beautiful thing. I have my bed and my laundry piles and my almost. Lately, I’ve begun to hate that. I want to express things and I want to explode. I want to feel extra pain or extra happiness or anything that shows I went for it. I want that badge. I want those consequences that come with it.

Listen, I’m not telling you to do anything, I’m actually asking you for something, today. I’m asking you because I can’t do it by myself because I’m just one boy wearing a full body condom made up of cheap target t-shirts and tasteless dick jokes. I’m asking you to open your mouth and scream in the proverbial ‘I’m young’ way on a mountain with me. I’m asking you to tell somebody how you feel, to stand by the sword to rejection and hope that it doesn’t cut your face and your heart and your brains off. I’m asking you to breathe deep and just go for it, no matter how many years you’ve lived on an island without fire. I wanna see the starts of a spark.

I want you to unclasp your mouth because I want to try with you. Let’s see if we can fall head first into something thorny or soft, just to feel the fall.

I bet it’s as awful and as big as we think it might be.