It all used to be magic.
The surprise of a Christmas morning, racing to see what presents under the tree bore your name. The giddy chaos of that last day of school, with the whole fun of summer on the other side of the school’s front doors, just waiting for you to burst through them. The tingling shock surging through your body leaning in for a first kiss, that addictive, heady mix of awkwardness and excitement, arousal and achievement.
All these singular memories percolating inside my brain, caught in 1970s sepia-toned glimpses. Those small little murmurs of pure happiness interwoven into the pressure cooker of grown-up expectation. Those nagging splinters that rub to the surface in the predawn hours of another mucky February night at the end of four decades worth of winter.
Because I will never purge the stigma of that Christmas when I couldn’t afford to put anything under the tree, though everyone else could. And, did. That feeling of inadequacy stuck and has since tainted every holiday season since. I’d give away my whole fucking world if it were actually mine to give. But unfortunately mine is a borrowed and rented existence. And that’s not something so easily re-gifted.
I realize I will never come as close to feeling free as I did on those hot Indiana summer days tearing through the neighborhood on a beat up dirt bike, with a baseball card flapping in the spokes, gently terrorizing the neighborhood with plywood ramped danger.
I am painfully aware that I will never love like I did that first time. That is a purity you only get to experience once in your lifetime. And afterwards, if you aren’t lucky enough to actually hold on to it, you become tattooed with a feeling of condemnation, sentencing you to a life spent seeking that same spark. Because love is nothing more than the slipperiest of all possible dragons. Yet we still feel driven to fruitlessly give them chase.
Because you fucking have to try. The alternative is simply unthinkable. And that leaves you desperate for anything to postpone the hurt. Or the emptiness that descends when it all comes crumbling down.
So the day inevitably comes when you wake up and find yourself always running– running out, running raw. Running around scrambling in the hustle, struggling to make those slippery ends meet. Running on empty. Running hot. Running alone and running afoul.
And all that running makes you ache. And hate yourself and the reflected image in the mirror you couldn’t be bothered to clean. The one attached to the wall of a place you never really wanted to live, surrounded by fields of dead corn whimpering in the last bites of winter, while the rust belt factories who lie about their employment potential stand watch, laughing.
There were hearts broken I never intended to harm. But it happened anyway. There were certain truths I could never bring myself to properly vocalize. So telling lies seemed simpler. The collective mistakes outnumber the positive accomplishments, so the best that I can do is sell my soul for the sake of the next manuscript’s unpredictable promise.
Because I understand words. And their implications. How easily they can be manipulated, seldom provoking any retribution beyond what is required to initially tease them out–and that only hurts me. So it’s okay. They click and clatter through the empty nights of my poverty. Often, they are the only thing I can afford for dinner.
They never seem to sell. Or garner much attention in the endlessly mundane swamps of influencers shaking surgically modified asses. They become lost in a blizzard of blandly optimized SEO drollery. Real writing has somehow become meaningless amongst click-bait titles and slideshow pitfalls designed to tease and distract from anything real.
In an auto-play, pop-up advertised world, words are the only hustle I really know. It’s a shame people don’t really read anymore.
Because I will be spending another night chasing them down again, just so I can earn the right to spend another day looking for more gainful employment.
Neither one comes easy anymore.
And, I’m slowly starving….
