"I think you're crazy, maybe..."

We walked into the tattoo parlor and I handed the artist my font of choice and inscription desired. It was a date of sorts for us. He held my hand and I lied on my side feeling the needle pulsate in and out of my skin.

"How do you like it?" the talkative tattoo artist asked.
"It's perfect."

A couple months before that my mother moved out of my childhood home. My parents divorce was still fresh and unfinalized. My ex's father died and a month after that we broke up. I finished high school and was burnt out emotionally. I didn't start preparations for college or begin to enjoy the first flush of summer. I sat in my room a lot.

"White red and sleeping pills
Help me get back to your arms
Cheap sex and sad films
Help me get where I belong"

I met Greg online on another night of making my room a foxhole of cigarettes and Elliot Smith. We talked and commiserated quickly. We met and while we were happy to begin a new romance, both of us were suppressing a dark place. Battling our own dysphorias. It took a long time, and more than that it took honesty, but somehow we managed to get through it together.

I carry that first tattoo on my hip as a reminder of that. Of how far I've come, how far we've come. And though it's been weathered with stretchmarks and though it could use a touch-up, I still cherish it.

We must sometimes embrace the darkness to appreciate the light.



(Id Quoque Transibit also known as "This Too Shall Pass")


And so when I stumbled upon this song again after not hearing it for too long, I couldn't help but cry. It is exactly the musical manifestation of my feelings when I went into that tattoo parlor on 6th Street.



And now?

It has passed. And all is well.

Everything In Its Right Place...

or not.

I have come to realize that I must accept all people. Accept them of their flaws, embrace them for their better attributes. But its not easy. Good lawdy it's not easy.
I'm not much of a 'people person' as it is. I'm more of a misanthrope than an optimist of the evolved ape. I expect the worst, hope to be delightfully surprised, and usually end up crying in my zinfindale. Like last night for instance. I was once again disappointed by the ways and reasons of people. Angry and shaken I took up chain smoking and wine in a cup for the night (it was no time for finer stemware so a glass cup was more fitting).
And I thought.
Perhaps it's because I was forced to grow up fast. By my senior year of high school I had a divorce, death, break-up and a new full time job all within the same month. I worked and saved up for my own car and bought it in full by myself. I helped my jobless at the time father raise my two little brothers after my mother moved out to go live with her old high school boyfriend. And five months after my 19th birthday I found out I would become a parent, and so I was, one week after my 20th birthday. I have moved about six times in less than a year, and watched my childhood home be foreclosed. Yes, the last two years have been tiresome, relentless and at times enlightening.
I'm not saying enduring any of this makes me better than anyone else. People have certainly endured worse. But it has altered me. Built character and perseverance.
Yet when I look around at my generation, I can't help but feel lost in a sea of people who constantly search for the easy way out, feel entitled to everything, and complain when it isn't to their standards. They refuse to see the bigger picture. They close their eyes and talk, get sucked up in petty college/high school/work/life politics, read the fear in the newspapers and watch it on the news, and at the end of the day after all the bombardment of social garbage they absorb, they feel like shit and want nothing more than to spew it onto the next person. Infect them so they're not alone. If you get trapped into it, the vicious circle continues.
Last night I let anger and pettiness writhe its way in my body and destroy my outlook on people once again. Silently thinking of terrible things I could say or write or do. Talking to myself and saying "you knew it all along didn't ya?! People ARE really seedy little fucktards! HA!" As my brain raged my heart sank and a little voice in it (perhaps my conscience or soul) told me not to give up.
Not again. Not now. Let it go. Let it go. Let it go.
I'm still trying to let it go. To be kind without feeling like a doormat. To be assertive without being a bitch. To do things for others without expecting even the slightest gratitude, and when that happens, killing the urge to completely write them off. I'm still trying to accept. I'm still trying to hope.I'm not making much progress with it just yet, but I feel I will one day.
And when I do something will finally feel sacred.





"One day I am gonna grow wings/ A chemical reaction/hysterical and useless."