Conflicted
By H.G. Miller
With my mind in conflict, I'd like to turn to poetry. Unfortunately, jagged
lines of insight aren't coming at me in tightly-paced bursts a few syllables
deep.
So, here we are dealing with long blocks of text again. I've been lame lately,
so this is going to be a bit of a stretching exercise. That was meant as a
metaphor, by the by.
I've been dragging myself this week. I had two happy hours - a separate one for
each floor of the office I work in - a reunion with friends from back when I
was still attempting to advance my career through participation in
extracurricular “learning” activities, and a birthday party.
I don't feel that birthday party is a phrase that needs any of my
uniquely-oblique and aptly-annoying embellishments. Agree?
Anyway…
Given such a vast cornucopia of opportunity, I had every intention of drinking
myself into oblivion by the end of this weekend. However, I have seen the
bottom of my credit cards' once deep well, and the carelessness of college
seems to escape me. So, while I still managed to spend more money than would be
considered responsible by any professional financial administrators, I remained
in a bland state of sobriety for most of my time amongst the other searching
souls of Los Angeles.
Like most people, a large part of my psyche is still trying to grasp what
happened a few weeks ago in New York and D.C. Now that all of the jokes have
been circulating the internet like wildfire (I particularly enjoyed gunning
down digitized Bin Ladens in a makeshift liquor store), the entire episode has
in some surreal manner started to take on the same feel as a celebrity divorce.
Of course, most conversations I listened in on dealt with the attacks and the
retaliation (boy, do people love to talk about the retaliation). So, I spent a
great deal of time thanking God that these people weren't actually running our
country.
The rest of the time, I spent thinking about girls.
To be honest with you, probably the most popular thought pattern of my short
life has been that of “girl,” or some variation thereof. I like girls. They're
nice to look at, often smell good, and when they let you touch them, they feel
fantastic.
Unfortunately, I am currently stuck in the never-ending cycle of singleness
that happens when you don't date anyone for a while, and therefore become
desperate, thusly beginning to act desperate, invariably exuding a musk of
desperateness that eventually drives the women you so desperately seek to
desperately want to be away from you, all of which leaves you even more alone
and desperate than you were before.
At various points in the cycle, you will alternate between thinking there is
something wrong with you that causes the women of the world to turn away, and
thinking that there is something wrong with the women of the world for not
realizing what an amazing catch you are with your steely blue eyes, steady job
and amazing command of the English language.
Eventually, you hate the world and you hate yourself. This only leaves room
enough to love stupidly-insignificant things like cars or houses or CD
collections (every Billy Joel album - take THAT, world!).
So, like I said, I'm feeling a might bit conflicted right now, and I just want
to make it all go away. The city, the people, the violence, the distrust, the
noise, the pain, the futileness, the images, the effort, the vast array of
obstacles that make even the simplest tasks struggles… all of it.
I'm tired… I guess that's what it really is. I'm tired, and I can't get myself
to drink it all away anymore, because I'm starting to realize that it doesn't
really work. And, I haven't found anything else yet, except for maybe the
writing.
But, sometimes, not even that…