“I suppose I’m just shy”
I think to myself,
As I cave into myself,
Or rather fold into myself.
I look up at them.
Some I am fond of,
Such as the retired nurse,
Laugh lines creased in her face.
Others I am subtly repulsed by,
Vitriol bubbles up in me
As I observe his behavior
That I find unseemly,
Especially since vestigial emotions
Of lust
Are connected to him in my psyche.

I don’t know,
I don’t know how to feel.
That’s a funny way to put it,
Because is there a particular way a person must feel?
I wonder from where our final decisions originate from.
I wonder why I am internally perplexed,
Not satisfied.
I wonder what can help me.
I see people who also suffer
With my sense of discontent and disconnection
But their ways of dealing with it
Don’t seem to heal
Their dissatisfaction.
If anything,
These people who seek therapies
For their woes
Only seem to fall further into the pit
They had found themselves in.
The labels psychologists
So frivolously bestow onto them
Have become a ball and chain
On their identity
Causing them to fall
Down the endless void of their suffering.

I just so vividly perceive a sickness in society,
And it makes me want to jump out of my skin
I don’t know….
Because oft times I find myself
Surrounded by people
Who easily pontificate,
Stepfords who don’t
Show any sign of a spark of Life
People who religiously
Play out their learned roles
From childhood,
Until their last moment on earth,
Never really going off script,
Never really having a desire to.

Now, I feel as if it’s almost unfair
That I had to feel these ways I do,
That I can see the world for what it really is.
But when I say this,
I know in a sense I am wrong,
Because my mind is just one mind
Synthesizing my reality through the
Scope of past experiences .
But why do I have to have this orientation?
Why can’t I just live a simple-minded life,
Like before?
Why must I always be searching for truth,
Searching for the reason why we’re here,
Searching for purpose,
For a deeper meaning behind all this?
Can I just forget?
Can I just forget and go back to a simpler time?

A simpler time
When the real world
Was the only world I was truly concerned about
It’s simple, straight-forward beauties
Nourished my soul enough.
I didn’t have any pressing need to
Explore unknown realms of the esoteric.
The natural world already had so much available to explore
And discover.
I was satisfied.
I was content.

But the anxieties of youth
And the horrific pains
Of childhood abuse
Created within me an incessant need
To improve myself.
First it began with makeup.
I caked layers and layers of makeup
On my acne filled preteen face.
Then I delved into the mind altering world
Of drugs,
With an emphasis on hallucinogens
Which was just another way to escape reality.
Just a mask of concealer that I could hide away under,
As my mind’s fantasies--
Fantasies that I could manipulate at will,
Became more real than reality--
A reality that I had known primarily to be
Cold and unforgiving.
But eventually the drugs took control of me,
And fate made it so
That I had to stop.

Finally, spirituality.
The final frontier, at least for me.
The most compelling of them all.
Absolutely endless and seemingly
Without dangerous side effects (not so)
Just another delusion I bought into, it feels.
But not quite.
There isn’t yet an ending
For this segment of my life.
I’m not sure
If there will be an ending to it.
I’m trying to find a way to actualize it though,
Instead of it being
Just another extension
Of my hopeless orientation to get lost
In daydreams.
I’m attempting to call this new chapter of my life
That I am currently writing,
The “Love in Action” chapter.

Well,
That’s it, I suppose
I don’t know why I make myself do things I don’t want to do,
Which inevitably makes my mind
Disengage
But anyway,
I guess I just want to become “real” in this lifetime,
And heal,
And stop searching so much,
And go back to the innocence,
The carefreeness,
The quiet joy and contentment
Of my childhood.
American culture is such
That EVERYTHING that can be commodified
Will be commodified.
So, I have to cut myself free
From the hypnosis of capitalism,
From the ideologies of the white man
So I can be lighter,
Flow through life with more ease,
Unaffected by this world’s disease.