I Don't Know

I honestly don't know when it came to me.

Maybe when I was a tiny little thing, with strawberry goo on my hands, running through the sprinkler

Or going to the other side of the hill where the grown-ups couldn't see me, finding bugs and picking dandelions and looking into the culvert drain whose gaping maw must be the gateway to Hades or the lair of a great snake that could swallow my entire Pre-K class without a thought.

Maybe it was when I was still very young in terms of circling the local star, but broken on the inside in ways that take many more years for most.  It is hard to be a child after watching death.  Not death on Star Trek, where the guy was wearing a red shirt and you knew he was going to die but you honestly don't care because Kirk and Spock are fine, but a long and spread out reality with gurgles and rattles and delirium and silence. 

It's hard to want to skip rope in the face of isolation, too.  Loneliness and misery are like drowning while almost completely paralyzed.  The water poured in to my mouth and nose and I gargled and bubbled in place of screaming, and my arms and legs twitched in place of swimming to the bright surface which is quickly getting farther and farther away until it seems impossible to reach as I descend into the depths, which I'm not sure about.  Is the water darker or is my vision fading to black?  The panic gives way to exhaustion and defeat.  I wait for night to come, where I can rest at last.

But I'm not dead.  I'm just stuck.  Trapped.  Maybe I might as well be dead, but I'm not.  My turbulent mind is all I really have at this point, and what can it make?

Words!  Stories!  Pictures!

Some of my mind is rotten and cruel to me, a shitty roommate who eats all my food and calls me names.

Some of my mind allows me to fall in love and watch fireflies and see that they are beautiful.

All of my mind is weird and confusing but full of things to say.

I can write to take me away from this world and find something more fun,

Or I can write to tell about the sort of pain that makes me lie in bed and stare at the ceiling for hours.

I can even write to tell about the beautiful things I see and what makes me happy,

Or about the terrible things I see in this society which is convulsing violently in the last throes of strychnine poisoning before finally collapsing.

I really don't have much anything better to do with my time than write.