I hate this brain of mine, Hurting me without warning, Off and on like a light switch,
I hate this brain of mine, Telling me that I’m worthless, I’m dying, I’m not good enough, I’m never going to be good enough, I hate this brain of mine,
Off and on like a light switch, Always hurts me without warning.
I will make use of my suffering. My suffering will become my images, my words, my escape.
Laying in my hotel room in 2019, fighting altitude sickness during one of my trips to the Eastern Sierras, I felt panicked, turned down dinner with friends, showered and sat on my king-sized bed, and came to be paranoid that someone was going to come in the back door to my room. I quickly barricaded the door with a chair that sat in the corner. I turned off the lights except for the one by the window and the bathroom light. I lay there feeling my heart beating out of my chest, often struggling to breathe. I began to think I would die in this shitty little motel room. I looked up rental cars, wanting to leave as soon as possible. I started to become fixated on the chair across the room. The light flickered every once in a while, casting shadows across the chair. , I thought someone or something was sitting in that chair. I couldn’t take my eyes or mind off that chair in the corner. I spoke to myself and quietly asked my grandmother to protect me if she could hear me. I soon fell asleep around 1 a.m. When I awoke, I could breathe again and felt somewhat renewed. I still can’t get over the feeling that someone or something was sitting in that chair watching me. It was an odd feeling that still stuck with me years later.
From the mouth of a child, Looking at me,
Looking at me like I was garbage,
He said: “What are you doing here?” With a disgusted look on his face,
I felt like leaving,
I stayed.
But I wish I had left,
Or just never showed up in the first place.
In the beginning, I lived life as if time didn’t exist, as if the passage of time was just an illusion. Suddenly, without warning, I started to feel it, its everlasting pull on (my mind and body), its incomprehensible speed that makes days, weeks, months, and years disappear in the blink of an eye.
Time exists, and it becomes age, loss, heartache, and finally, a war I cannot win.
I have stood atop burning bridges without ever noticing fire and smoke, instead finding them burning with tears and pain, seeing parts of myself float away, never to be seen again.
I have stood atop burning bridges without ever noticing fire and smoke.
There is a heaviness that weighs upon my back and my chest. The heaviness of love makes my heart feel so weighted that I am sure one does not die of a broken heart alone, but instead of a heart that finally just stops all motion. The heaviness of my world bears down on my shoulders and back like a planet-sized boulder leaving me feeling like an immovable object, only left seeing the world move before my eyes and feeling it spin below my feet.
Hope is an entitlement for the rich, and both a dream, and a nightmare for the poor. All hope has ever gotten me is let down, heartbroken, and depressed. Hope has only ever left me utterly hopeless.
And suddenly, as if in some screwed up dream, there are things you wish you didn’t know about the people you thought you knew.
In the past, I have thought about killing myself, but I don’t personally have the nerve for it. It takes a brave person with nerves of steel to carry out such an act. To boldly go into the unknown on the off chance that anything is better than this.
I watched you die, I held your hand in the hospital room. For some reason, I opened your eyelid and looked at the small pinpoint pupil of your right eye. I wiped the cold sweat off your forehead as I told you that I was there. Later, I watched you take your last breath and told you I loved you with my hand on your shoulder.
Years later, I still feel like my grandmother’s dementia was somehow my fault. Her death was ultimately somehow my fault.
I will die alone,
On a day like any other day,
You will all wake up and go about your day,
And I will die alone,
The world will turn, rivers will run, traffic will continue along I5, people will be stuffing their fat faces with fast food and filling their tanks with gasoline,
And I will die alone,
Families will be together, people will be on dates watching movies with popcorn, children will be playing,
And I will die alone,
Phones will ring with no answer, messages will be sent with no response, People will be caught up in themselves,
I will die alone.
Some days, I think it would be easier to be a boozer, it might be easier to get through life not thinking about any of it. Only thinking of a bottle, instead of constantly thinking about everything else.
I read books to understand. I read Kerouac to understand life, the beauty, and the pain of it all, and I read Bukowski to understand the gray areas of our often black-and-white world.
When I die, if I can, I think I’ll stay and walk the earth until everything ends.
Some of the happiest moments of my life were the short moments I spent on the road as a photographer. The moments I spent seeing, experiencing, and photographing places I had never seen or felt before. Steaks in bowling alleys, burgers or chicken strips, and fries from roadside stops. Sandwiches from random shops just taste different. The smells of trees and fresh air, the sound of tires rolling across the road like great waves crashing against the shore. These were the moments when I was at my happiest.
I have ridden down long hallowed roads leading to truck stops, rest stops, mountains, lakes, restaurants, fast food, gasoline, doctors appointments, emergency room visits, and more of the same. Roads that felt as if they led somewhere or towards something more. Places unknown, places seen. Roads leading to places I have wanted to go and places I have not. Those long hallowed roads past places you miss and the people you miss seeing. Roads leading north, south, east, and west. In time those roads might be in a different place, and you might be in a different place but there’s something about those long hallowed roads that will always lead me home.
I’ve always felt odd not wanting to be anything, instead only wanting to mean something.
Nothing is real, everything is beautiful, everything is painful, everything is a lie. Everything is real, nothing is beautiful, nothing is painful, nothing is a lie.
Looking in the mirror, I wonder if this reflection of me has the same life or could this version of myself have a reversed image of my life, a better life, no panic, no depression, no heartbreak, and no mental health issues. I wonder if my reflection ever looks at himself in the mirror and wonders why he looks so scared, sad, and tired, not understanding that this version of me is in hell while he is in heaven.
I am forsaken. Forsaken to feel pain and hurt the way other people breathe. Forsaken to feel the pain of the body, the hurt of mind, heart, and soul. Somehow without them, I don’t think I’d be able to survive.
Toxic Stress, Toxic Worry, Toxic Anxiety, Sometimes it’s a situation, Sometimes it’s a thought, A memory, Sometimes, it has a heartbeat, Sometimes it’s human.
I don’t remember what it feels like to be happy anymore. If I could run away from myself, I wouldn’t ever stop running.
On my way home this morning I thought about packing my orange North Face bags and hitting the road, not telling anyone, just leaving. I miss the road so much that thoughts of my orange North Face duffel bags and my camera bag thrown over my shoulders with a king-sized bed waiting for me in a hotel somewhere on the road haunt me. I still find myself looking up train tickets across the country. I feel like I was able to be myself away from everything. I feel like I found myself on those road trips, and somewhere along the way, I lost myself again without them. From my first ever road trip, I began to notice that the act of leaving is the hardest and easiest thing to do all at the same time. You miss people, yet you also learn who you are when you are away from everything you know.
These trade winds are blowing me west again, Finding myself lost,
Winds that are blowing me home,
My heart and soul floating on the surface,
My body is somewhere below the sea of stress and anxiety, These trade winds are blowing me west again, Blowing towards a new beginning,
Far from the ending.
I stood there and noticed I was alone under the big universal sky. I felt alone; I was alone. I turned and sat on a bench backed by weeds watching the universe unfold in-front of me. There I waited for something, anything.
The gentle clicking of leaves rolling down the street and across a freshly cut lawn with every gust. The rushing sound of the wind through the trees on my road was like a thousand plastic grocery bags being crumpled up all at once. The tinkle of glass and metal wind chimes, and against all this is the low whooshing sounds of the wind coming in through far-off trees and in between houses filled with people unknown. Sitting on a bench near Manzanita Lake with fresh air and the slow sound of lapping water against the shoreline while hearing the wind rushing through the giant trees of Lassen Volcanic National Park like a freight train bearing down on you before only gently brushing across your face.
You can find me standing in the middle of the road with places to think, to remember, to forget, places that don’t get lost, where the backroads are long, and the fences are barbed.
At night I dream in thoughts and words,
I sleep on lines of digitally typed sentences, At night I close my eyes and write,
I wake up and type my words on my phone, In the morning I wake up tired,
At night I write in my dreams,
In the morning I wake, Exhausted by the world.
I have seen their faces outside and in the stores shopping, expressions of impatience, unkindness, worry, loneliness, hurt, anger, and often looking lost, In a hurry yet headed nowhere in particular. Attention spans broken into 15- second clips. Everyone believes they are more important than one another. People who say please and thank you and walk around with a smile on their face are the same people who will judge you, laugh at you, or make fun of you behind your back. These faces are the unforgiving, impatient, and lost face of Humanity.
I’ve stood on the cliffs of Northern California watching the ocean come and go
Wave after crashing wave
Thinking about the things I wanted for my life.
I’ve wandered through the eastern sierras, visited ghost towns, and looked at the sky so dark the entire universe seemed to be looking back at you, I’ve suffered altitude sickness and laid in hotel room after hotel room alone thinking about the things I wanted for my life.
I’ve been surrounded by people and friends that weren’t really friends but were more there for their own convince than anything else. I’ve been told what not to do and what to do by people who honestly don’t know what they’re doing themselves. I’ve been told that I’m not good enough for some, and made to feel like I’m not good enough for others. And left thinking about the things that I wanted for my life.
I’ve watched my travels stop, I’ve seen my face paralyzed from Bell’s palsy, and felt myself disappearing into nothingness on more than one occasion. I’ve thought about the things I wanted for my life only to realize that those things never thought about me.
I’ve thought about the things I wanted for my life only to realize that those things weren’t for me, and I’ve realized how lucky I am that they weren’t, I’ve realized that what I want for my life is too much and not enough all at the same time.
I’ve been living like I’m dying, going to bed countless times, not wanting to go to sleep feeling as if I won’t wake to see tomorrow. Rushing to the ER multiple times for what they say is just panic, anxiety, and stress. I’m stuck in my head, trapped in my tomb of what feels like safety.
I’ve been living like I’m dying, giving up hope, not realizing that I’ve accidentally broken parts of myself that I don’t know how to fix anymore.
I had a dream. I was walking through a city when I heard the trumpets. The ground shook, and the people around me started screaming and running. The buildings around me swayed and began to crumble and float away like dust. The street and sidewalk broke apart, and everything slowly faded to black. I floated there, watching three glowing triangles become one to the sound of the trumpets. As I got pulled closer to the triangle, I woke up. I got out of bed, went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth, and when I spit in the sink, I only spit out of the right side of my mouth getting toothpaste on the counter. I laughed and wiped up the mess. Slowly, I looked up in the mirror and noticed that the left side of my face was frozen. I started crying as I began to feel weak on my left side. Later, in the Emergency Room, I was diagnosed with Bell’s palsy from stress and anxiety. A week later, I reacted badly to the steroids they gave me and felt electricity coursing through my brain. Later that day, for a few seconds, I saw the darkness again and could see myself floating again, only this time without the light of the triangles and the sound of the trumpets.
On the days when I feel like I’m drowning, I’m walking on dry land. Where I feel lonely, I’m surrounded by people. When I feel like I’m dying, I’m alive. I’m still here.