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Archive for August 8th, 2009

The story of me

August 08th, 2009 | Category: Life

We’re all a story. We wake up in the morning. We have jobs, and hobbies. We have friends, families, lovers, and people we don’t love. We do good things, we do shameful things. We make choices, our choices affect one another. We’re happy, and we’re not. Our stories are connected, they’re collaborative, we don’t have total control over the plot that makes up life. When we die, it all adds up to a story. We get summed up in an obituary, by the people left who remember us.

Lately, I think a lot about Kurt Cobain, Elliott Smith, two people who I completely admire as artists and writers. Two people whose stories did not end well. I like them because I feel like I understand them, because I see myself in them. It’s not that I said to myself years ago, “those guys are so amazing, and one day I want to be a talented, depressed, suicide to be.” They haven’t shaped me into this disaster that I am. I don’t want to kill myself because I listened to Old Age, or Between the Bars. Kurt and Elliott haven’t influenced me, but I think they mirror so much of me. I’m ending up like them, and it scares me. I can’t find a way to be happy, or content. People tell me I’m a great writer, but I don’t necessarily feel good about it. I love writing, I know I have skill in my craft. It’s just that I’m not writing the way I want. I spend so much time writing nothing because I can’t turn off the noise in my head. When I do write it’s often so dark, but I can only write what I feel. I write so I don’t drown in that darkness, because I need somewhere else to put it. I don’t like feeling these things that I put into words so well, it’s exhausting. I almost never feel comfortable, or at peace. At best, I’m a fuck up who’s good at writing about being a fuck up. Elliott has a line, “they took your life apart, and called your failures art. they were wrong though…”  I write because it’s what I adore, I think it’s something I’m meant to do, but I’m rarely proud of anything I put out. People tell me I’m an amazing person, but I’m not. I know I’m not. I’m a screw up who’s just so tired of everything. All the liquor and drugs in the world couldn’t fix me. Kurt and Elliott saw the same thing. I see the way my story is going, and I don’t know if I can write my way out of it. I’m starting to feel tired of trying. I’m tired of lonely and empty, but maybe I’m too far-gone to be anything else. I don’t know.

Maybe I’ll die having nothing I ever really wanted, and that will be the story of me. The only reason I keep trying is because it might not.

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