The Human Soul
The human soul is a beautiful world; very beautiful. How much I loved it and believed in it, isn't it the one who plants the basil? Isn't it? Where truth tells all the unimaginable beauty, never an illusion, it is the beauty that descends early, shaking hands with the boys in the streets.
Don't you see it descending every day? its hands soft, planting the basil, how do they want it ugly? Can the one who plants the basil be ugly? How can they lie all this lie? Just come a little, towards your soul, towards a world that does not know ugliness and lies.
Yes, ugliness is not real, and it will not be, no matter how hard they try, don't you see that they are always disappearing? They stole everything and did not leave a flower. I wonder where they got this cruel heart from? Did they not know that the evenings are warm, and that the fields have their delicate hymn? How can there be all this darkness in their hearts? I really don't understand.

all those doughy-eyed, snot-nosed, putty-cheeked, frog-mouthed, bull-headed, cowardice faces: they were born
without sorrow
until they hand over their lives
to someone they truly don’t know
and they do it with a smile
and a gleam in their eye
and then they get sandpapered down
and polished in something
they did not choose,
their freedoms get capsized and
they don’t know what they’ve done
or why they’ve done it.
they become enraged and frustrated
with themselves
but they do not know where
to project their anger.
they can’t do it at home.
they’re too afraid of what they might
lose: their own self-made agony
so they take it to work with them
or to the supermarket or to the restaurant
and aim at anyone over any little thing.
they can’t do it at home.
those poor deluded fools careening towards
the only elusive dream that matters: happiness.
some of them are regretting decisions,
some of them are stewing on mistakes,
some of them are plotting their escape
all that sacrifice, all that pap
all those easy words
whistling like stream;
“I love you.”
“I miss you.”
“I want you.”
“I need you.”
all of it: for nothing
all those droopy, sullen-glared, turkey-necked, warthog faces everywhere;
laying in cold beds, coddling empty blankets,
****** in sorrow, contemplating the error of their ways,
alone with themselves, alone with each other.

I am the same man
in a different bedroom
where the walls are painted a different color
and the furniture is different
and the items are different
and the style is different
and the mirrors are different
yet, I stand before them
and I look the same
and the bed is different, feels different
and the woman is different
and the *** is different,
and I stretch out on the bed
hands behind my head
elbows pointed outward
looking up at a different ceiling
where sometimes
there’s a ceiling fan
staring down at me
and I think about all my little women;
some were so sweet when others were so bitter
yet each one had changed my life in many different ways
either through experience or by mistake
but, like the ***, it’s all the same in the end:
finished.

the women are strong and beautiful
and relentless
the women can withstand pain
far greater than any man
113 pounds of meat walking the streets
they don’t need your muscles
they have their voice
and before you know it
you’re tossed out on the streets
or left alone with roaches
or thrown in a jail cell
or taken to court
or put in a madhouse
after they got inside your head
and tore you down psychologically
or played with your emotions like a puppet
and left you to the point of suicide while
they ride around town with younger men
113 pounds of meat walking the streets
the power they hold
the magic they perform
the voice they use
they can take you to heaven
or send you straight to hell
they can clean the **** stains
from your underwear
or have you sitting on the edge of a bed
in a hotel room, penniless, with the bottle
tilted towards the stucco ceiling,
wondering where it all went wrong
they don’t need your muscles
save them
for whoever or whatever
might be coming next.

We are all like wildflowers. We fall to the ground as seeds, some are swept away without a chance, while others begin to germinate and sprout after some time in utter darkness, enveloped with earth for what must feel like an eternity.

We begin to form ourselves into the ideal shape under ideal conditions, and even under conditions which would more than likely do us in, by the grace of the universe and process itself.

We gather up sunlight as the manifestation of motivation and courage, and we begin to satiate our spirits with unspoken gratitude, which spills over into joy and laughter, which we commit to our subconscious memory, and we let it build us up into stronger, more beautiful versions of our truest selves.

But this inertia and energy only lasts so long, until we are buffeted by the harsh winds of unfortunate events and circumstances, until we require rejuvenation from the universe and from the very depths of our subconscious once again. There is a waiting period for this to occur, which I would call depression. When we feel like it’s not worth the effort, when we feel like giving up or not pushing ourselves to our limits, or even when we feel like just not so much as enjoying the passing moment, we must gain strength from outside of ourselves at times when we feel we do not have what it takes to keep pushing.

The beauty and magnificence of life is ultimately contagious, and when we realize that bad times breed good times, we realize that good times ultimately spill over into inevitable bad times. The Yin and Yang is a good example of this. “As above, so below, as within, so without.”-The Emerald Tablets.

When we reach our peak, our flowering stage in life, we are so beautiful and full of radiance, and everyone around us thinks so too. That’s what I mean when I say the beauty and magnificence of life are ultimately contagious, but the same can be said for negativity, doubt, hatred, self loathing, fear, pessimism, and the false idea that life is only to be enjoyed by the rich, and that there’s no hope for the average individual. These thought patterns will hold you hostage, they will break you down, and they will make you virtually unable to process any sort of joy regarding this incredible experience we call life.

The only way to break the cycle of negative thoughts, is to take a step back and practice gratitude and awe for the absolutely insane process of our evolution, and our growth as a species, our growth as wildflowers, who are strewn about the countryside basking in the sunlight, swaying in the breeze like our very emotional states often do. We are a thing of untold majesty, the true personification of all that is, and when we finally say goodbye to our oldest and closest friend, Gaia herself, the planet, the life cycle, our temporary blip in the history of mankind, we can we can hear her laughing, giggling like a young girl at the antics of a playful kitten, telling us that this life had not gone to waste, and that our memories and energy will live on, and that all of us, no matter how seemingly insignificant, have made an indescribably positive impact on the world around us, and that the world was made infinitely better because we were here. We, the wildflowers, are here to give people joy, and to see the beauty in us, and ultimately all around us.

Daniel Johnston was an underground American singer-songwriter known for his nonconformist stoutheartedness, vibrant and vulnerable use of lyrics, and DIY-esque recordings. Johnston suffered from many mental illnesses in his lifetime, nevertheless, his creativity shone through as a driving force throughout his artistic career. Johnston is more widely known for his album, Hi, How Are You, which received some mainstream recognition after Kurt Cobain was photographed in the 1990s wearing a t-shirt with the album artwork on it. Daniel Johnston passed away on September 11, 2019, at his home in Walker, Texas. This was also the same day my husband told me he hated me for the first time.
I remember the way the grass felt under my skin when he said those words, the way my face flushed and how my vision became slurred, toppled over, motion sickness-like. When someone says something like that to you and you actually feel it with every fiber of their being it does something so irreconcilable to you. I had never told anyone I hated them before and I vowed that day I would never make someone feel the way I felt in that moment as long as I lived.
I’m embarrassed to say that we weren’t even ******* married yet on that day. When I told him about how I couldn’t get that memory out of my head 5 years later, when I was asking him for a divorce, when I finally saw things as they should have been, as they have always been, how incredibly wrong they have been, his immediate response was “you tell me you hate me all the time.”
It’s hard to explain to people when they ask why I stayed so long, as if it really wasn’t so terrible, I could have left at any time and then I think about how he said to my friend when I was moving my things out, how what he’s done “wasn’t really that bad because look at how she’s grown up and how her dad treated her mom I mean, she should be used to it, shouldn’t she?”

She should be used to it.

I won’t go into detail about all of the terrible things, about the way I think about the worst things of myself because of someone else’s repeated phrases and subtleties, how when I close my eyes in the shower, I'm nineteen and think of the bedsheets against my face, how the cotton felt like razor blades and the hands that were supposed to hold my cheeks, the spaces between my fingers, certainly not around my neck, for a split second before he came to, and we had to pretend like everything was okay and we were in love, and it didn't mean anything because it didn't leave a mark and he didn't actually hurt me, and it was the first and only time, and then the drug problem that wasn’t a problem because we don’t talk about problems and problems can’t exist if we don’t talk about them, naturally. You can fill in the blanks.
I don’t want to explore the darkest parts because I’m scared I’ll never come out.
Instead, I’ll say that I lived a life with him that I imagined I would have grown to accept if I hadn’t been able to embrace how totally unknown you are to yourself unless you start looking. Neither of us really tried to figure each other out, let alone ourselves. I can’t fault him for that, but I can hold myself accountable.
I don’t want sympathy like he does when he logs into his social media accounts and posts for his friends and family to watch his very public slow paced downfall. I just want to portray a slice of my truth. I want to be able to log into Facebook and not worry about people reading about my divorce publicly from the man who feels like he needs to clear the air of something he’s so clearly dirtied. I want to wake up feeling proud of myself for finally finding the words to describe the ways in which I have personally tortured myself through the means of another person. I want to be able to let go. When I had to leave, I had to lose everything. All I have is nothing. I am nothing. Sometimes all I feel is nothing. But I’ve learned becoming nothing is better than being someone's object or accessory. I would rather be nothing.

One day when I am far away from this point in my life, when my hair has grown back and I have gained a few pounds, rather than at the rate at which I am losing, I know I’ll be able to look back and forgive myself. I know I can forgive those who have done injustice unto me, however, it is so much harder to forgive myself for such a total abandonment of self.

For now, I'll settle with the sentiment of knowing that I am not (that much of) a *****, I am not a bad partner, I am not a terrible person or a stupid ******* **** who messes everything up and makes everything her fault.

Was everything really ever my fault?

I know I am brave, I am kind, I am empathetic (to a fault, but I’m working on it), I am smart, I am funny (sometimes), I am capable of being independent, I am a gentle morning after a night out, I am a flashbulb capturing a moment of pure elation, a smile in slow motion, I am a still dancing flame that cannot be snuffed out.