There is a strange and paradoxically beautiful element of being, which is that you can be whatever you want to be. The paradox comes from the fact that while you can, you likely won’t. At least not without hindrances, of which there will be many over the average human lifespan wherein we are all twenty inside forever and none of us are more intelligent than a headless chicken still trying to stay alive. They can come in the form of emergencies, like medical ailments or house fires. What disease can do to a body, fire does to a home; a slow burn, a raging period of gutting and destroying, and a frame left withstanding but holding nothing besides memories. And then, you bury the body and try to hold onto the memories without touching the doorframe or soft blushing cheek turned hollow. Never again can you feel with your hands and you are left to feel with your heart.
They can come in the form of a short circuit, a snap in a synapse that leaves your brain swimming in eons of filth and cosmos, an astronaut whose forgotten life on earth, a rat who forgot what a pleasant sun shined outside of the city gutter system. There’s a green film on top of the lake in your eyes and when you look out everything is marred with garbage and algal bloom, phosphates building, problems building, and taking a once youthful and babbling river to the slaughterhouse. A bleeding bull is a bleeding brain — a murder gone unpunished. A once powerful, brazen enemy of disorder and chaos now the embodiment of both as it twitches and dies on the floor. And everybody stands around the dinner table, thanking God that they won’t starve. And you? You lose sight, you lose touch, you lose footing, and you become the you that lives in chaos. You become the evil inside yourself. And what priest would lend their time to the exorcism of a cow? The only people who could’ve helped you are ripping you open with forks and knives. We people are emotional cannibals.
They can come in the form of a sudden realization that maybe you have entered a contract with the Devil, who is nobody you know but rather every circumstance on a winding road to hell. Perhaps you have kindly obliged and eagerly accepted a thousand opportunities like bricks to build your home with, but you forgot before the cement dried that you never built a door. One window to look out of, but if you break it the wind will come pouring in and ravage every possession you placed so perfectly around the room. When the possessions begin to haunt you, your eyes will twitch with pain. You will no longer want to take a shower alone because the thoughts will scare you too badly and it is far easier to confront the realities of doing the right thing going wrong when you are drunk. But you can’t get drunk anymore because the last time, you thought too hard about breaking the window. Every day you will stare out the window and see the children waving to you. You will see the seasons change and know that even if you reached an arm out you couldn’t feel the difference between them. When the possessions begin to mock you you will think about breaking them into a thousand tiny pieces and using the tiny pieces to scratch yourself out like a match struck in the wind, like a newspaper typo corrected in red pen mailed to a “careless moron” of an editor. You will begin to see yourself as this kind of mistake. When the possessions begin to talk you will become frightened and maintain a sense of order that only a soldier can rival, with every calculated, tactical move carried out in the name of honor and defense. You will not want to let their voices overshadow your self discipline. You will win by learning to survive on nothing. You will convince yourself you’ll never need again and by never needing you can never be beaten. No weaknesses, no little red dot between your eyes. When the possessions change shape, color, smell, size, you will think that you have lost your mind. When you realize that you have lost your mind, you will become even more frightened. You will change shape, color, smell, and size. You will begin to wonder what losing means. You will begin to wonder if the possessions have been winning the entire time. When the possessions begin to load guns, you will break the window. To your surprise, you will certainly feel the difference between winter and spring.
