2004-12-19 - 7:25 p.m.
sex. love.
is it possible to forget? or is it like they say...like riding a bicycle? i don't feel like i remember.
if i think about something too much, it always blows my rhythm. like hunger. i think about food so much--what am i eating, what's the caloric value, am i really hungry; i mean, REALLY, or is it just bored hunger, or stress hunger... now i can't even tell if i'm really hungry or not. it's been scrutinized so much that it's been heisenberg'd; the act of observation has changed the object beyond recognition.
certainly i think about love and sex a lot. not that its done me any good. i went about it like any good plugger, preparing for an eventuality that then never happened. i mean, okay...i got laid. but now even that seems gone from my life. just the possibility of things seems gone.
i hang onto the memory of rick so hard, mostly i think because of that intensity, a feeling i wouldn't trade and don't regret no matter how it all turned out. there was something so tangible and erotic about being solidly, completely asleep, only to come to life at the touch of his weight on the edge of my matress. my skin would tingle. so alive. and so different from the undifferentiated now. i go through the motions, but i don't feel that anymore. there's only the nub, a phantom limb of libido and heart.
i was watching that simple plan video again and thinking about how i still feel that same quote unquote 'teen angst' even now, years out from it. and i wonder how many others there are...that never outgrow that feeling of separation, isolation, and lonliness.
and now i think i understand; sometimes, all you have, all you are or can be is persistence. no special powers, or destiny, or coping mechanisms...just the knowledge that as many times as you've been kicked down, you get back up. that you will continue to get back up. spitting blood and bone maybe, but you will persist, until you are dead. in the dark labyrinths of the underclass, persistence can't be bought and can't be stolen, even by despair.
i am persisting. but is that the same as living? not only do my memories seem bled and dry, but so do my feelings. i write of people who love, but i don't feel sure what that is, or what it means, or how it feels. it's something i am trying to recall, not something i feel. i tell people i love them, but secretly i wonder: is this love? is this what it feels like? why is this love? how can i tell?
i feel like i'm faking. dazzlingly well, perhaps, but faking. and from faking, how far is it, to sociopathy? how far is the distance from numbness to uncaring to contempt?
i miss love. i miss sex. i miss feeling like my skin is just something to keep the blood in, rather than a feeling entity of its own. i miss that twist in belly and groin, halfway between shiver and ache. i miss coming by someone else's hand and not my own. i hate that my groin hurts, but only from running too hard for too long, trying to outpace my own insanity. i am...sublimated. and i feel faded and fading, a momento mori of something and someone once beautiful, once alive and now only a place holder.
but i am persisting...
