Black

What sort of self important egomaniac sits around quipping about all of the incredible things they have done, how momentous their accomplishments have been, what great heights they have achieved? Simple children might at first be impressed, but even children and the illiterate can begin to recognize false pride. Falsity oozes out of braggadocio until it covers the speaker in a shit-like film that spreads stench for miles around. Truly to tell you that anything about my life has been momentous, incredible or important enough to make me better than you would be a lie. It isn't good to make your writing smell like shit. The problem that I have faced so many times is that I really know nothing other than what I have lived. It would be foolish of me to think that my personal experiences demand elevated description, that these experiences make the life of the average person seem small. The only way to avoid the trap of pomposity, then, must be to focus on the minutest of details of this, the most unimportant of lives. Somewhere meaning must have been hidden underneath the endless layers of pointlessness.
I think I might have some idea of what I want to say. Around the time it occurred to me I had thrown away the greatest opportunities of my life in favor of a good feeling I realized it was going to be infinitely harder to win back my self respect than it had been to burn it up. Maybe the only thing I will ever be able to teach anyone with talk about my own life will be that you are nothing if you lose sight of what you have been taught is right, and that once you are nothing it is a long way back home baby. I don't think I have returned yet. I don't think I will ever escape this trap I laid for myself. I am, and will always be, the most miniscule speck of dust beneath the heel of the society that didn't lose itself, that didn't wonder what its own name might be after getting into the good feeling far too deeply.
Listen to the fool who has seen the passage of great things given him out of his hand, traded for a wisp of smoke the wind all too eagerly yanked away, laughing. The ability to know who you are, what you are worth, that you are good, makes all the difference in the world. Never let a good time present itself as all important, because once you believe the lie you have traded your spirit and only pain will bring it back. Those who do not believe what I say can refer to these words as self important quipping, but know that in so doing you are really telling yourself you are too important to learn, to hear the pain in my voice. If you can't see the pain is real then you should give it a go, lose yourself in the big party, spend a few years under the influence, and then try to get out yourself. Then you'll know.
I don't know why I even think now that anyone will come after me and read the most important thing I have ever written. I don't know why I harbor some small shred of hope that these words will save some stupid teenager from the ceaseless nightmare I have seen, and which still wakes up inside me to take over my reality. When it wakes up the world turns black and there is only hurt. Maybe I hope because if I had not written this then there wouldn't be any hope at all of ever saving anyone. Maybe the hope isn't so wrong. Maybe this writing will do something positive. If I were to ever let go of that hope there would be only nothing, and I am a hardy fool who doesn't let the void consume him without a long fight.
 
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Symbols of Decay is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License..
Related written works at Angelfire, Sex Symbols, Cymbals of Silence.Repent or Die