i miss U

everything is too much

nothing is enough

i am terrible

i am trying

i am not

i am

tired

being

here

i miss you.

you are all the light I have ever wanted.

you are all the love I have ever needed.

burning glass, shattering ash, drowning blood

hating red roads paved with their stained hands

clinging to that which cut deeper and deeper and deeper

coz at least bleeding extinguished some of the flames

and the pain felt like paying a necessary price.

but that was a lie I was caught in

a moth circling a fire

with the inevitability

of a planet

around

a star.

there were only ever two exits

but you were my third.

you are

my third path.

and my first love.

a second chance

& the last song.

thank you

for finding me in the dark

for sitting beside me in the park

for showing me your scars under the stars

for offering me more fire instead of only blood

and for giving me water when I didn’t even dare ask for it.

you make existence worth it all.

i wish none of this separation was necessary,

but what’s two years when I would wait two hundred?

lifetimes, universes, eternity

you alone are worth it all.

time IS like a wave

things WILL be

forgotten

but not

you

never

you

i will

find again

and until then

know that i miss you

so, so much that it consumes

but i don’t mind it one single bit.

after all, you are the one who

took my hand in your own

when i was drowning

in spilled blood

whispering

let it burn

and now

I burn

only

for

U.

change

is the wind made of words. or are words made up of the wind. I think both.

but words can also be so powerful. like a storm. devastating.

but as capable of feeding as of ending. take fire, for instance.

i have been the fire. nurtured and destroyed by the same forces.

the wind is outside, but the fire is within. we cannot control the things that happen to us. the winds that hit us. their intensity or intentions. none of that truly matters.

what matters is how it affects your fire. and what steps and structures you can incorporate within yourself. to either enhance or diminish the impact of the wind.

every breeze, every storm. every whisper, every song. however long it takes.

of course things go wrong. miscalculations are made. things are expected that don’t come through. while other things, once unimaginable, like miracles, come true.

the world is a large complex puzzle. you are a piece. but a piece that can change and evolve to either fit in where it is needed, or grow out of places you don’t belong. regardless of whether you once did.

if we stop changing, we stop living. stagnation is death. life is change.

so, change. no matter how scary. you are alive. and things must change. if you don’t, then you fall out of the spaces in the world that until now we’re holding you up. or back. or down.

there is no good or bad. there is no correct or incorrect. there is only this moment, and what you need from it.

getting what you want from it is a bonus.

but, in every moment, take what you need, give what you can, and move on.

whether it’s forward or backward, up or down, better or worse, move.

change.

it’s the only way to live rather than just exist.

so, change.

Change is the Only Constant

There was a moment, once upon a time, long ago now, when I thought that i could belong. Ever since and ever before, I have spent every waking minute well aware of how alien I truly am. Feel.

Feeling, maybe everyone feels this way. Maybe we all feel we don’t belong, and do increasingly insane things to try and fit in. Inside boxes that can never contain the circumference of existence.

Existence, does that make sense? A sense of being? Or a sense of forever trying, and failing? So how much more of a failure am I for never even trying? Not because I didn’t want to. But it would have been too easy. And it would have been too hard.

Hard, because I was too far away, and even if I were to make it, leaving is all I have ever known. Easy, because all it requires is self mutilation. And I have always been so good at self destruction.

Self destructive used to be an insult. Much like the feeling of being trapped in a tower on the moon. Not one person understanding that the cost of meeting them halfway, or any way at all, necessarily involved falling and crawling and falling again, crashing through the atmosphere in flames that were my own as much as they were not.

Not that I knew any of this in the beginning. I thought I was trying. But from that beginning, it was always a given. That if I had to cut and burn pieces of myself, I would rather destroy what I didn’t like, rather than what other people, constantly changing, forever fickle, perfectly imperfect, just like me, didn’t. And I learned to instead pride myself on being true to myself, real. Real.

Real. As if something like that even exists in this world of ours built on lies and illusion. From the biological to the astronomical, from the living to the endless, we are all caught in intricate webs of lies spun lifetimes before our own. Even the idea of immortality assumes a beginning.

A beginning is inevitable, after all. Because it’s easier to imagine forever stretching out ahead of us into an as of yet mysterious future. But the past is a separate matter altogether. We have none of us ever experienced the future. But we have each one of us come unfailingly from the past.

The past, past the edge of today, lurking below, an ever changing shaky foundation of differently remembered, differently perceived, differently being. How can we stay the same when nothing ever does? When nothing ever can? Not even rivers or mountains or planets or suns or stars. For everything must change.

Change is the only constant, it is but inevitable, but what does that truly mean when even the inevitable constantly changes? For there is no real end. Just ghosts of things that existed once.

Once, I used to think I could belong. But for a long time before that, I knew I never would. And an even longer time before that, I did belong. As atoms and star dust and particles of carbon matter, made up of the Universe.

By the Universe. For the Universe. And once everything is over, I will inevitably belong again. Or perhaps I will always only ever pass by. Everything is a happening, after all. Humans, yes. But also rivers and mountains and planets and suns and stars. Forever.

For ever. But what comes after? What came before? We do not even have the answers for these questions when it comes to our own lives. How naive to believe we can comprehend eternity. How ambitious. How human.

I do not feel human. Maybe that is what makes me so. Maybe there is no thing as human. It is only a symbol, after all, a piece of fiction, a fantasy spun from our minds and collective consciousness in an attempt to make sense of existence.

It doesn’t make sense to me. But, sometimes, when I catch the sun right before it sets or rises, when the moon hangs bright in the dark night sky above (or is it below), when I stand at the edge of an ocean pulled ever deeper into its vastness, my perspective shifts, and I understand.

Understand, even if only for one fleeting moment. And I belong. So what if that is too but a happening? What comes before and what comes after is too. Everything is. And so nothing must be too… For everything must change.

Change is the only constant inevitable. But what does that even mean when the inevitable constantly changes? What does anything ever mean? To you. To I.

And I know why it matters, but how does it?

Does it?

Excuse me

You know what I just realized (for the thousandth time)?

That circumstances, situations, states of mind, emotions, provocations, intoxicants – everything outside of us, really – are all just excuses.

We do what we want.

And we are who we choose to be.

We just find a way to be what we want as easily as we do to want what we are.

Sometimes because it is all too much to take, sometimes because it isn’t enough.

I’ve cried, fought, bled, made, broken and kept promises, chosen to live and tried to die and decided to keep moving forward – done the exact same things, basically, made the exact same choices – both because I don’t want and because I can’t seem to want enough.

None of this is new, nor revelationary enough to warrant recording.

Still, it is funny. Dying to feel just as desperately as dying not to.

Tch.

I miss myself.

Even the blood.

Especially the fire.

It doesn’t help, knowing I have so much more of it all inside.

Containing it within has always been the hard bit anyway.

And the way this war goes is as familiar as it is strange.

I miss my self.

Especially the fire.

Even the blood.

To be Or…

What does it mean to be?

Not human or even oneself, but to exist, in all your sums and parts and then the things that exist in between and beyond those.

I have never been able to answer this question.

Some times I’m too far away from everything in existence, and some times I’m too deep into one small fragmented aspect of being.

The distance above, the depth below, it’s like I keep oscillating between the two. Like between the nothingness of a space where I could explode from everything I try and contain within in the absence of a world outside, or the pressure of a depth that squeezes the life out of me, leaving me breathing in nothing but whatever it is that surrounds me so completely – something that I can not survive on.

There’s no air, there’s never any air. Then how am I always on fire? And if I’m always burning, why do I then forever feel like I’m drowning?

I mean all of this in a very abstract state, by the way. The years have seeped the feelings out of me. There’s no urgency, no pain, not even any regret. I can only feel the medium I exist in.

But then again, hasn’t that always been how it’s been? O

Only thing that’s really changed is that I’ve stopped pretending to accept it, and really have.

I think…

Sometimes I feel like an alien lost on some foreign world. Sometimes like I’m the only one that should be here.

Does that sound vain? I don’t know. I don’t feel vain. I don’t feel much anything, tbh.

Just out of place.

Like I just don’t know how to reconcile the world inside with the one outside my head.

I don’t know why.

It’s not like I’m hurting or even angry. Like I said, things have never been better. I’ve never been more sorted and balanced and stable and sane. And happy.

But even that leaves me feeling weird. Because while I’ve always been disconnected, at least I knew who I was.

My rage. My pain. Even my confusion. These were the colours my soul was always painted in, as far as I can remember.

Who am I now?

Am I even any more?

Descartes said he knows he is because he thinks. But what if that’s part of the illusion? The thinking, as much as the being…

I think the problem is that I don’t know what I want.

But that’s not entirely true.

I do want things. It’s just that, in the absence of any certainty as to who I am now, I don’t know what it is I truly want and what is only part of the illusion.

Though, I guess this has always been true too…

I don’t know how to end this… Confession?

I was gonna say rant, but that’s not what this is. Not even a confession, really. Nor a plea.

Maybe it’s just a fact.

Maybe it’s not even that.

… I think, though, as long as I want to at least ask myself these questions, no matter how distant or deep the answers, whether they exist or don’t, whether they change Or never come… So long as I have the questions, I am here.

Anything and everything exists in three parts.

I think as long as we can be one and not close ourselves off against the second, the third will happen automatically.

Pain, destruction, creation, confusion. These are only words for necessary phases of being.

I don’t mind going with the flow.

I’m just worried at how unworried I am about merging into the stream.

And I can’t tell whether it stems from too much or too little of something.

Nor what any of it means.

I’ll figure it out though.

Or not.

But as long as it’s still fun to try, I guess it’s not all meaningless just yet.

Like the clever boy said, we live, so we love.

Indeed. We live.

So we love.

And we love,

So we live.

💚

Tired // Fine

Ah, so much for writing daily.

But I should have known it was unsustainable. There’s just so much to do. And never enough time…

Any way, I’ve been thinking of some things lately.

Of a whirlwind past that seems to have finally set me down still trying to catch my breath. Of old friends and memories and moments suspended in time and space like doorways into a past I can never quite remember, yet never quite forget. Of hazy days spent in different kinds of ways and nights ending with watching too many sunrises. Of illusions painstakingly built and effortlessly destroyed, and people I have been and those I broke. Of ripped jeans and scruffy sneakers and wild hair and too much to drink and never enough sleep. Of shooting stars and falling rain and the way everything shined and the indescribable shapes of all the things waiting in the shadows. Some good, most terrible, all beautiful, except when not. Of unstoppable laughter and tears that bloomed but never fell and all that spilled blood, both mine and not…

And so much anger. Relentless. Like the rebellion, constant, with and without all the causes.

It’s strange. I held on to it all for so long. Until it crumbled under my fingers into something from which nothing could be salvaged. So, I did the only thing I have ever known to do with things I could no longer carry.

I set it all on fire.

Expecting only ashes, but left with imprints in my memories and scorch marks upon my soul.

I keep waiting for them to hurt. But they don’t. And i can’t tell if it’s because I’m too numb or in too much pain already. Or if I’m just that okay, that distant, that beyond it all.

I don’t know which one I want to be true.

I don’t even think it matters any more.

Except when I think of all the smiles and frowns and hands and knees and jokes and laughs and hope and despair that I once knew so well and will never meet again.

Everything changes, but nothing is lost, or so the saying goes.

I don’t know if it’s true.

I don’t know anything.

Except maybe that I’m tired.

I’m fine. Better than I’ve ever been before, in fact. I think, honestly, I think I’m even happy. Which is more than I’ve ever really been able to say in at least a decade.

Probably longer.

So, I’m just fine.

But, also tired.

So tired.

I let myself burn for so long, trying to protect the things I was holding on to, only to finally set them on fire myself… and I was prepared for ashes.

What I wasn’t prepared for… was the blueness of the sky, and growing to love the taste of things like bitter black coffee and sweet dates, and humans being beautiful in ways all the more lovely for the ugliness of the world they bloom in, or finding oddly comforting reflections of myself in shimmering shards of other people, and the way i can’t decide whether flowers look prettier in the dark or in the light…

I think I’m scared of happiness… Which is probably a great thing, considering my habit of diving head first and off the deep end into whatever frightens me even a little.

But it’s only now, now that i’m here, floating in this bubble of contentment and timelessness, that I realize that I was happy all along. Even if it was a different flavour of happiness, and disguised heavily by all the sweetness of sin and the bitterness of regret. And the sourness of resentment.

Whatever. You get it.

The point is, I was happy.

We all were.

Except somewhere the world broke those I considered mine, in one way or the other.

And I never even tried putting them back together…

Never even noticed how much they hurt.

Or, worse, did, but ignored it…

I’ve never claimed to be a good person.

But, this… what does it make me?

Tired, that’s for sure.

So tired.

I’m fine.

I’m fine.

Another Dawn

It’s dawn again.

I’ve watched the sun rise through so many different phases in my life. On cold rooftops and green fields and empty streets. In dresses and capes and leather jackets. With family and friends and lovers. As a child, in college, as a grown up. Because I was up studying, partying, fighting, bleeding, destroying, creating, raging, loving. Sad. Happy. Alone. Not.

Sigh.

It’s weird. I’ve known so many kinds of hurt, and so intimately, that even if I can’t call myself immune to them, I at least usually know what they entail.

But, lately, every time I am blue, I find myself …grey. In the sense that all I feel is distant and disconnected. Everything feels so far away…

The one cure I have found is running. Now that it’s been nearly two years since I last smoked even a single drag, at least half of which I’ve spent learning to dance, my stamina has made such an impressive comeback. And i love that feeling of the cool wind on your skin even as your heart threatens to burn up inside you. It grounds me better than any substance ever has.

Still, it adds to the weirdness, because, in a way, I keep feeling like the person I was before I went to law school. I don’t know if it’s the sobriety or the physical activity or just the fact that I feel like I’m thinking clearly for the first time in well over a decade. But, whatever the reason, I feel like the person I used to be. Minus all the teenage angst and inexperience, of course. And that is awesome.

What’s not awesome, though, is ten plus years of realisations striking home. Stuff I never allowed myself to even fully process in all this time because I never had the requisite bandwidth or free memory space. Now that I do, it’s like my brain is working overtime trying to play catch up with the life I’ve lived but not absorbed or reflected upon and understood from – adequately enough, anyway.

That’s my theory anyway. For why everything in the present feels so far away and unreachable…

It’s not that big a deal. Just that I know I’ve got to be careful. Got to guard against the temptation to deal with this disconnect the way I used to. Even though I know better now. Old habits die hard.

And I have been on this habit slaying trip lately. From cigarettes to alcohol to coffee to people to situations… But, wait. I’m so sleepy, I barely know what I am saying

Oh, no, I wanted to stay longer, but I’m having so much trouble just keeping my eyes open.

Guess I’ll go to bed now, and continue this tomorrow or some thing.

Ah, I like this feeling.

Stay safe, everyone.

Peace out.

Guess who’s back

It’s me again.

I know. It’s been forever. But things happened. As they tend to.

First, though, lately I have been getting rid of things. Or trying to, anyway.

It’s something I haven’t really had to do in years.

Anyway, the point is that I was reading through old notebooks and diaries, and cringing aside, it was such a trip to read about the kinds of lives I was once living, the kinds of people I have been.

In so many ways, I’ve changed so much (obviously) since I was a teenager, yet, in others, I am still that same person.

Basic structure, i guess, as my law school roommate and I used to say.

Thing is, while there’s no way I am keeping a physical diary again, at least not at this point, I do miss writing – about nothing, I mean.

I’ve spent so many years now writing with purpose that I’ve forgotten how much I enjoyed that. Writing for writing’s sake.

So, I suppose this is my attempt at getting back into that. Though, what with all my new activities since the last time I tried something like this, I honestly don’t know how sustainable any of it even is. But, I’m nothing if not the kind of person that tries.

…

There’s actually so much to say. Things really have changed. I can barely even recognize myself.

But, for the first time in my life, I can say with certainty that it is all for the better.

That I am better.

Than honestly I’ve ever been before in my whole entire life. Except maybe, of course, when I was a kid…

I don’t want to stop here. I want to talk about so many things. Broken habits and promises withheld. Closed chapters and new books. Beautiful boys and girls both dead and alive. Dance and music. Compassion and apathy. Daoism. Duality. Life. Death. Pain. Healing. Sanity and insanity. Betrayal and liberation and love, both fake and true. The falling rain. The rising sun. The colors of my soul. Green and red, forever. Black, always. And so much blue & grey… About running- both from things and to places. About three legged dogs and pretty flowers and the feeling of never having enough air, but finally learning how to live with that. About leaving and returning. Farewells and reunions. Blood. Sweat. Tears.

Wow. It’s like now that I’ve begun, I don’t want to stop.

Then again, story of my life, eh?

lol.

I’m still going to, though. Because I am tired, and the rain is making me sleepy, and I have too many things to do tomorrow. Today. Whatever.

I intend to be back soon. Though, only time will tell if I manage it.

So, until we meet again, be it hours or years, good morning, good night and take care of yourself.

Peace & Love.

Jaded Jade.

0606

Inevitability

The first time they met, the setting sun shone brightly for a moment, blinding after days of dark storm clouds.

Much later, in that twilight place, no golden sun marked their next meeting, only the crimson of spilled blood.

Now, after all these years, that past reaches out; a river of red amidst a sea of black.

There have been as many storms in the skies above, as have been at their feet below.

And more blood spilled than either of them could have ever even imagined, let alone wanted.

Not that it matters much, now, caught in ocean currents, borne ceaselessly into the future.

Once, they believed in the inevitability of them, of finding their way back, always.

For however dark the road, brighter were the lights that lit their way.

But, most water, like all time, can only flow in one direction.

And there is no going back, not for them, not anymore.

Which is probably for the best, all said and done.

For even if it wasn’t wholly dark and bloody.

Even if the sun shone, bright and golden.

Even if they were truly happy, once

It was only ever, always, momentarily

For nothing gold can last

Especially not the past

So, sail forward.

Bloodied, golden.

Alone.

Live.

Die.

Be.

The Rising Blood Moon

Seasons come and go

Some things change and some do not.

Watching blood moons rise.