My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

It’s been a really long week, I’m tired. I haven’t really been sleeping, I just get exhausted and shut down, then some horrible dream wakes me… It’s a loop. I have too much in my head, too much weight on me. I can’t even write anything simple, I’m too tired.

I have too many thoughts in my head, it’s a mess, crowded and cluttered. The solitude, my big, showy, digital self-banishment, that hasn’t helped. Not that it would, not that it could. I mean, my being broken inside, my not being able to write or focus, or feel anything good, none of that has anything to  do with IMs or Tweets. I’ve done a lot of thinking recently, mostly when it’s dark and quiet, and I’m alone, wrapped in lonely. I just have to take what’s really weighing me down, and get free of that weight. I’m carrying too much, my backpack is too heavy. I’m exhausted. I’ve felt this way two Halloweens in a row, it’s so… my fault.

Is it 2008, again? Sitting in a room, my room, some room, any room, alone, wanting to be someplace else. This isn’t my room, at least, not the room in my head. That room, it’s so different.

Watching movies alone, wanting to be someplace else. Not any place else, not, “Oh, God, anywhere but here,” but someplace. Someplace nice, someplace I’ve been, but can’t seem to stay. Writing without writing, or not writing, not there’s much difference. Though, the writing without writing, that’s really more of a 2005 kind of thing. I’m so 2008, or 2005, or early 2007, or even the latter half of 2009, not that it matters. They’re all pretty much the same place.

Oh, Peter Smith-Kingsley, where are you?

I’m aware that at some point, probably soon, people are going to forget me if I don’t start writing again. I’m sure this is already starting. I really don’t want this to happen.I love words and writing, arranging words into something whole, and hopefully beautiful. I like that people read my stuff, and when someone tells me that something I wrote affected them. I don’t want to be forgotten, and I don’t want to disappear before I’ve written something of real importance, something that feels important to me anyways.  I’m just stuck, and the desire to write things, anything, isn’t in me. I’m drowning in anxiety, and fear, and a certain emptiness, and ennui. I hate these feelings, though they’re so completely familiar. The thing is, I don’t feel “lost,” I’m not lost. I know where I want to be, what I want to feel, I know everything I want. I always know what I want, I’ve never not known. This, it’s like a bad dream, and I can’t wake up. I so can’t wake up.

Still, I need to write. I need to force myself to write, something, anything, everyday. Maybe everyday. I need to try, at least.

So, I thought I’d write lots about my trip to Cincinnati, I thought I’d write everything, but I just don’t have the desire. I feel more like writing the Reader’s Digest version.

I went to have my trach looked at by the foremost airway specialist in America, Doctor Robin Cotton. He personally looked down the hole in my throat, changed my trach out twice. He decided my trach tube should be 5 mm. shorter. So, we’ll see how that goes.

I did a lot of wandering around the city, and it’s actually a very cool place, I just wasn’t in good spirits, because of some things that I don’t plan to write, probably ever. I got a tattoo my first night in town, sort of a physical reflection of my intense melancholy. It felt necessary.

In the hospital, I mostly spent three days watching movies, as my left eye was swollen shut because of a weird sinus thing, so I couldn’t wear my glasses. I’m a little blind without my glasses. Mostly, I was lonely. I thought I was past lonely, but before I left I became not-soo-certain.

Anyways, I’m bored, this is boring, and I don’t have the will to make it interesting.

So, right now, I’m at a La Quinta in Lexington, Kentucky, but only for another hour or two. It’s only about one hundred miles to Cincinnati, then I’m off the road. It’ll be good to get off the road, too much time for quiet reflection in a vehicle speeding toward somewhere I’m already nervous about going hasn’t been good for me. I’ve convinced myself into some pretty awful things, like, “You’ll never be anything more than you are right now, and you’re going to die a lonely failure.” I don’t always do so well alone with myself, I’m not particularly good company.

Last week was really weird, the morning I took to the road was exceptionally bad, and I’ve had too much time alone to think about all of it. I suppose I could write about the weird, but the bad I’ll just keep to myself. It’s weird when someone explains that they can no longer be your friend because you’re just too dark, they just can’t stand you anymore. That’s weird, and pretty unsettling. Maybe they’re right, that’s what I keep thinking. Maybe I just need to quit people, because I’m just too damaged. I mean, I could just pretend to be someone else, but that’s the same as being alone, except with a lot of work, constantly writing and being some character who isn’t you. I’m only genuinely close to one person, but maybe I shouldn’t be. I know she deserves way better than me. Maybe I just don’t have a home, anywhere with anyone. I hope not, but I’m almost thirty and that’s what scares me just now, that’s what’s scared me every day since I left Tampa.

I’ll write again from Cincinnati, but I doubt I’ll have figured anything out by then.

Tattoo by Fish, Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, this is how I ended Tattoo Crisis 2010, this is how I fixed what was quite possibly the stupidest typo of all time. This is the finished version of my thirty-ninth tattoo. I mostly think of this tattoo as a reminder to think things out before I go and do something dumb. I was really pretty down when I got the idea for it, thinking about how people who seemed so important to each other end up apart, never talking to each other again. Like I said, I was really pretty down.

He can’t sleep because he’s not with her. He wants her close, the flesh of her cheek against his arm. He wants her steady breathing in his ear. He’s alone in a room that doesn’t feel like home, such a place seems distant right now. He’s kind of a zombie, a wanderer, doing the things people do, but his mind is always somewhere else. He’s a moth with no flame. He can’t sleep, so he writes…