I’m still young right? like whenever I look at my life I always tend to look at it in such a melodramatic fashion, as if I’m the main character of some sob story that’s gonna bomb at the box office. Like, isn’t it ever tiring to consider and see yourself constantly as a mechanism of your own masochistic suffering? Who says that I should even be writing anything at all, that my experience is worth sharing or that by the end of it I’ll feel better whatsoever? The scariest and, oxymoronically delightful thing is that my own feelings of self importance drive to be someone that I am not. That person who I am not guided by voices of those who have been so helpful as to give me advice along the trodden path of being. All the constant saying and sufferings of those who have lived far more plentiful lives than I have have guided me in a certain direction or waywardness that is impossible to rear under your reins. It is often said, “we all just bullshit through life”, as if were all some pathetic actors, merely struggling to hold on to any sense of genuine authenticity or even autonomy over our lives. Then what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Do I see myself as being the main character in a movie where I am the sole actor, or is it that I see the world around me a stage and I’m the only one actually improvising my lines and actions. It’s all so very stressful, to be quite frank with you, I do not wish to think this way but alas, here we are, we being me and whoever may hope to have the pleasure of reading the inner workings of the world around me as it simultaneously collapses and rebuilds itself constantly. “The world is in constant flux”. Never have those words rang truer than when dragged through the wringer drying you of all that made you feel alive to begin with. After the wringer comes only reflection, and after pain comes only the never ending gaze of yourself and others. Pain can often be marked by the eyes and how much people have seen or lived through can be expressed through, literally, how much they have seen. I’ve noticed that when I tend to sketch eyes I draw them tired and restless, as if I was subconsciously self aware of all the problems that I had. When the weary eyes I had just drawn came to life for me and reflected their own created sadness. What was it all for you may ask yourself? Was all the grief for squat? If I don’t write about how I’ve felt and what I’ve seen and the vast many different lives that I have experienced thus far, then I am deeply afraid that it will all have been for nothing. Not for nothing, misery, guilt and shame, all apples falling not far from the tree of despair. Distant cousins sure, but confined to their own limits underneath the umbrella of utter hopelessness. ‘Woe is me’ who has had the pleasure of living simplicities while manifesting complexities. At the end of the day, I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror, in the eyes, deep into the soul of the self-identity, and be proud of who I became by the time it all inevitably fades to black and the curtains close. Then we move on to the second act.
It’s very tempting to speak or write in a way that makes you the extreme actor of your own life, or perhaps in the life of others, but ultimately it can do nothing but misguide your emotions as to what’s actual pain and what is ‘imaginary’ pain, manifested into actual pain through constant negative thinking. I don’t hate myself. I have no desire to end my life whatsoever (in fact, after all is said and done, I’m not sure if I have ever felt that way). I just want to be heard. I also don’t think it’s pointless to tell your story either, or that my own is in any since invalid to the life I have been living so far. So, my friends, I write this with the hope that it will shed some light more into who I am and ultimately, “what I am about”. Ever since I was young, authenticity has always been a very desirable trait that I have always tried to emulate or praise in others. With that in mind it’s also important to be authentic to other if at first you are not authentic to yourself. So while I meanwhile write this for the intention that other people read it I also hope to gain something from rereading it myself over and over and actually give me a more progressive insight as to why I feel this way all the time. Furthermore, by acknowledging and documenting the way my thoughts organize themselves, then hopefully ‘catch myself’ when falling down the spiral staircase of despair. To anyone reading this, some of the facts that I may present might be very different from the person that I try to be, but the skeletons can no longer be hidden in the closet. If I hope to resemble authenticity in any way then I may only hope to do that by sharing my story and the life that I have been through and the places, people, and events that I have seen and been through.
Ultimately I chose to write this ‘preface’ in three parts because I was never really quite sure about how I was gonna end it all. To be quite frank, each part is really just a projection of how I was feeling at the time, and to be even more honest, none of that quite represents how I feel right NOW, in the moment. I find it hard to be able to express myself in a manner that is not self destructive and destructive to those around me. What does it all mean anyhow? Why did I decide to send whomever is reading this through a whirlpool of conflicts and emotions that runs through my head constantly? Was it my own self-satisfaction and self-importance that led me to create this monster of burden which you are reading right now? I don’t have the answers to these questions and whomever might be reading, I don’t think I ever will. What I can say though, ‘when it all fades to black’, is that what one person reads or consumes through all manners of the five senses, is how one person begins to think of the world around them. To say anything at about your life and the ‘inner machinations’ of your mind you run a risk of that eternal and everlasting gaze of others that I was talking about, albeit in a more conceited and pompous manner. I guess in ‘the end’, the everlasting and eternal gaze that I so like to refer to are just transformations in mind of my perceptions of other people onto me. That is to say, it doesn’t exist. We can all choose to hope and see the world in a variety of ways, but what I can’t hope to see is the impact and effects that it can have on others.
I choose to title this writing (work, piece, unravelling, or whatsoever you choose to call it) ‘preface’ because I want to give whomever is reading this just a taste of what their in for. Call it neurotic, psychotic, or just plain normal it is who I am and perhaps one of the topics in my head that I chosen to avoid so stalwartly is that very topic of identity, and moreover choosing to identify with the words that I am projecting to all of you as you read it, and at the moment in which you are reading it. This isn’t a preface to anything in particular, but rather a reflection of my own self conflated sense of ego and belonging. That is to say, it never really existed, because up until to the point in which I decide to publish this nobody ever had the chance to read what I really though about anything. Upon returning to the questions which I have prompted above, why did I decide to do all of this then? Well the title, moral, or meaning, of the whole ‘point of things’ is precisely that. A preface precedes all that in writing which is truly the meat of the ‘point’ that anyone tries to get to when they indulge themselves when they read anything. Then what is this a preface to? I can only hope to look to the sky, count the stars, and ask myself, in a moment of spiritual self-centeredness, the same question.
If you made it this far, thank you for reading I promise that things won’t be this confusing to read in the future.
