401

i may not be an especially bad person.

but i am a terrible human.

or terrible at being human. whatever.

I try.

but it’s all trying.

like having to remember to breathe.

like having to remember to breathe.

I’m tired.

I’ve been tired for so long.

I have somewhere to go now though.

Some place to walk towards.

And, I might be crawling, but it’s only and towards The Light.

The shadow to my shadow.

god, i miss you so much.

sigh.

how many more nights must I stay up?

(before I can see you again…)

.

.

.

(401)

shadows and secrets

you’ve said this before, you know

with pretty much the same look in your eyes

and if that was all a lie

then tell me how can i

believe it will be different this time

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.

the escape

I wrote out our names in both blood and sand

Not knowing that all you wanted was ink

I told you that I did not understand

But we were just waiting for us to sink

.

Ink fades, blood stains, and sand shifts with the tide

Nothing true is real, nothing real is true

For you, we know, I would have gladly died

But I just would not, could not, live for you

.

Under drowning moons, upon burning seas

I danced towards an edge you could not stand

You dragged me back, with chains around my feet

But I was never made to crawl this land

.

And so I waited until darkness came

Even though I swore I wanted that light

But not at the cost of a cage built of blame

I’d rather burn, free, alone in this night.

Ending Infinity

There was a place not too long in the past

Where all our goodbyes, I know I was still counting

But now that we are here, long past the last

I look back but cannot seem to place the ending

.

It seems I can’t even speak of the end

Without taking a trip back to the beginning

Like I can’t even begin to pretend

To separate all of the sin from the sinning

.

Maybe it’s just all the blood on my hands

Ledger Red that I cannot seem to leave behind

In shades of the memories I can’t stand

Like a tune that will not stop playing in my mind

.

Perhaps you truly were looking for peace

Even if you had a strange way of showing it

With all your threats to bring me to my knees

And always on the verge of throwing it

.

It used to make me want to laugh, you know

How your blade in my throat was your idea of peace

But before I was caught in that undertow

For far longer, it only made me want to weep

.

How did we even get here, I wonder

We, who used to hold each other so carefully

How could we tear each other asunder?

How did we even reach that place of no mercy?

.

Maybe you did just want bloodless and kind

Maybe I was the one turning battles to wars

For the blood on my hands may be more mine

But I wish none of it at all had to be yours

.

There was a place, not long ago, I know

Where I was still counting all our goodbyes

But nothing of it remains any more

Nothing true, but not even any of our lies.

.

Begun: December 2016

Finished: April 2022

Edited: August 2023

Forgive Me

please

won’t you

listen to me?

once upon a time

a lifetime or two ago now

i chose to burn in the name of love

but the truth is that I just liked fire too much

anything and everything I set myself ablaze for was just an excuse

fear, and loathing, rage, and respite, despair, and joy, and especially distraction

those were just reasons I came up with to justify all my endless arsonist tendencies

Love was just my favourite excuse, because only it felt like an equivalent exchange

but there’s nothing equal about destruction, and I have always known that

i just pretended otherwise because I so liked the thrill of feeling alive

for when not burning, I spent all my time with shadows & ghosts

not necessarily always cruel, but always cold, and suffocating

i liked how fire was both lighter and more brutal than I

not much has ever been, not in any way I could ever accept

but fire, like the sea, or moon, always felt familiar

like a home I have only ever had in people I leave

behind, ahead, in the past, future, inside even

places and times don’t make sense to me

very little feels real at all, to be honest

but I’ve learnt to live with it all

in blood and ash and pain

as also pure numbness

i think that’s why

i loved burning

so much

Sorry.

More dreams, apparently

I had a dream. You were in it. After months.

I was floating in an ocean. Birds flew past from the city to the deep. The city was on fire.

You stood at the shore, flames reaching for you. I begged you to walk into the water, so it could quench the fire. You sneered and said you’d never let yourself be tricked into getting close to me again.

And all the while you burned.

I swore I only wanted you to stop hurting. You showed me a pretty bird on your shoulder and said you didn’t hurt anymore.

But you were still catching fire.

What would it take, I asked you.

Drown, you said, your eyes dark but cold.

Ok, I whispered, though I wanted to live. Okay. For you, still, always, just please stop burning.

And I drowned. Screaming, though it didn’t hurt. But, because I had things to live for.

The last thing I saw was you smiling with your hair on fire. But the bird was already dead. And you didn’t even care.

You were just happy that you’d won. And i’d lost.

But I was happy too. Because I was tired, and it meant you would stop burning.

And suddenly, everything smelled like rain.

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.

💚

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