brown noise

 i only really use social media when i need my brain to shut down. it's easier to shut down. if i was a more well adjusted person, i wouldn't be seen much. life would have been comparatively cleaner. sometimes i make decisions just to see how far it goes. sometimes people know that and sometimes they don't but they don't really mind. no one really minds. it's all brown noise. it's all just happening with the brains turned off.

i only really cry when i need my brain to shut down. i only really talk to people when i need to stop thinking. i only really write when i need to avoid what's really going on. because it's all brown noise. it's all happening without thinking. it's consensual brainwash, which is contradictory in itself.

i am scary when i start thinking. when the brown noise turns off. that's when you hear the real world. that's when you're not afraid of losing anything, because the illusion of having is restrictive in itself. 

i am gone when i start thinking.

so the question is, why don't i? why don't you?

it's all brown noise.

sorrow is willful. it is often that i underestimate myself in terms of capability. there is fear caught within vindication. and vindication catches belief. and then you catch me running after words that i am scared will not define me if i do not run.

fear is ever only the thing that holds me back. and the labor of running. 

when wondering why i fiddle with notoriety, i realize it could be that for a long time i have been convincing myself to find good in less, which is conflicting. less, then lesser. then least. less is unacceptable. i am learning to run as much as my battery powers me. sympathy does not issue more.

i am learning to take ahold of my greed. i am learning restraint. at 18, i am learning like a child. 

at 18, i am teaching myself like a parent. at 18, i am being all the goodness i need to see in the world.

and i am being enough.

the rest is brown noise. 

i am learning to call comfort easy and evil.

it is difficult, but all difficult things in life have saved me. and have not once asked me to pay. 

difficulty has liberated me. 

and nobody sees that. some people like being taken advantage of. some people like taking advantage. and none of these people inspire me. they all sit in willful brown noise. 

*

i started writing this 8 days before my father killed himself. 

his suicide was all in brown noise.

most of his life was in brown noise, actually. 

which brings me to my point, that brown noise is good. until it isn't. 

sickness is good. until it isn't.

and none of these people matter. and now i wonder if any one at all even matters. 

i've been surviving the filth of humanity for the past week. the worst of the worst. and that is ironic, because you grow up to think of death being very sensitive. 

my father did not go gentle into that goodnight. he clawed in savagery, he roared and screamed and begged and pleaded. i never knew whether to blame him, or the people before him or after him or around him. or to blame the society of it all. 

as sick as he was, he loved me. i knew that. he knew that. he just didn't love me enough to do all the right things. we had this silent understanding between the both of us, where we knew we were drowning. we'd never save each other but there was this solidarity that we were drowning together.

until i didn't want to drown anymore. that always upset him. 

i never really took a step back to realize how screwed up my family really was. sometimes i owned it. sometimes i rebelled against it. sometimes i used it as a tool. sometimes i forgot it existed. sometimes i wrote about it, when i didn't have anything else to write about.

when people talk about the sickness he went through, no one really talks about the years of excruciating horror. or how i inherited parts of it.

i never got as much sympathy as he garnered from it. and i'm still alive, so really who does that help?

i give myself a pat on the back because no one gives the people who are alive a pat on the back. like as if it's expected to stay alive. as if death is this sympathetic martyrdom. like a sacrificial lamb or something. 

it's really not. killing yourself is really not that hard. and it isn't a nod to sacrifice and other poetic justices. it's hard for people to be okay with the fact that some things don't mean anything.

death never really means something. it isn't an answer or a rationale or a cryptic message to encode.

and a lot of literature banks on death being really meaningful and important.

the irony is that, all the while any of us are alive, there's not as half as much concern as there is when we die. and that's really pointless.

and nobody ever does their job right. 

(i miss you. i miss you. i miss you and your nothingness and your vacuum.)

it would probably be very comical if it wasn't this tragic. 

my father really did screw up the way i saw the world. 

so it went like this.

he had a really really horrible mother. she could have been the residual filth of all humanity in a person.

and he had a really mean sister. and he had a father who was really meek and sort of sick and sort of compliant. and he grew up like weeds grow up. in gaps. in limited spaces.

my father was weed. and nobody understands but everyone feels really bad for weed. 

and i grew up protecting an adult man from his own decisions. and then protecting these other irrelevant people with similar traits because he kind of trained me to be this savior of the unloved.

a savior of the unloved.

i don't know how to feel about all of this. i've been saving people since i was born. at 18, i retire.

people get mad. some get disappointed and rest say i've changed. and i admit it.

i've changed. i needed to be needed. amidst all the brown noise, i needed to stand out.

across the years, i forgot how to need people myself. 

by 18, i've seen most of the filth of the world. knowing, that there's more to come. 

and i miss my baba. 

i told him i loved him when he was dead. 

and for a second it felt like i had perhaps never loved anyone else.

for a second, it felt like a mother letting go of her firstborn. 

for a second, it felt like my world had broken into pieces.

i think i might vomit.

it rained the day he was cremated. it rained the day his father was cremated. 

it rained and nothing else mattered.

it rained and it melted the faces of every one who spoke to me and touched me.

it rained and the air smelled like dirt.

it rained and i was angry. confused. exhausted.

it rained and nothing was fair but it rained.

it rained like a self fulfilling prophecy, like destiny had come home. and it hurt because i never believed in that.

it rained and it tested my faith. and it tested my father.

he loved rain.

and i almost loved him

and he almost loved me.

and now i know.

*

closure is ugly. in the sense, there never is one. every thing else is a sign that you need to stop.

in the end, there is only rain. the rest is confetti.

                                        a section of A Portrait of Marten Looten - Rembrandt