The last three nights in a row… not as pleasant as you’d imagine.

When I wake up, I can’t. The dream-world meshes with reality for longer and longer periods of time with my eyes open…

I feel like I’m going crazy.

Is understanding that all that you’ve written could be flipped around by the opposing party, and the feeling is mutual. Almost. The real difference between you and me, is that I don’t need to turn you into a monster, or an undesirable sloth in my mind to understand why there is loneliness.

It should have been handled as adults. Not with destruction, but construction.

I am as guilty as you are, and I’ve genuinely apologized for my breaking-through of boundaries. It’s not your fault I was alone. And it’s not your fault you couldn’t appease me. You said and did some things that broke boundaries and burned bridges, but only because I pushed the limits of my privilege in most cases. And as for the others, well, we both made assumptions that came back to bite us in the ass.

The danger in this retort is to make statements about your character in the same way you did about my own. To blur the line between what you want to strike my heart and what is true. It’s a temptation I’m guilty of pursuing on more than one occasion in discussions with you. We both know we’re more reasonable than the other would care to admit when vulnerable. I’ve seen it; not frequently, but often enough to know it’s in you.

You can go ahead and milk this situation for the consolation of your writing, and I won’t blame you. It’s a healthy and productive catharsis, I’ll concede. But one day you’re going to have to accept that villains don’t exist, and that what happened between us was no more than a tragic happenstance pushed forth by the naivity of youth. That you loved me, and I got scared, that I loved you, and you got annoyed. 

I could get offended and defensive about your blatant and subtle insults, but I recognize that they came from a place in your heart that still hurts, and I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be the better (hu)man, I’m just having to put a lot of thought into not lashing back by accident, and attempting to, hopefully finally, settle the dust and shake hands. There is no grown-up reason for us to quarrel. Just childish bitterness brought about by broken hearts on both sides. 

It’s in the past. An old and silly relic stowed away in the attic of my soul that makes me smile to think what I had to learn. I hope you’ll be able to smile about it one day, too, not condescendingly, but fondly. There’s a fine line between taking this with bitterness and irritation, and taking it for what it is: a recognition of equality and a genuine mediation. It’s a conscious effort, I know.

I’m sorry you still hurt.

Who is to say what lies ahead? Things we desire not?
For these none can be certain, but let it not coerce you into remiss,
For lack of certainty is no reason to surrender to loss, and precautions may be taken to bolster the security of Love.

Who is to say what lies ahead?
The battered remnants of a relationship, doomed by a broken radio.
Transmissions going out, but never coming in.
We look through a hazy scope to receive only what information fuels the impressions we seek to remit.

Where from come the waves that knock, beat and batter our tethered vessels ‘gainst one another? Our sails and oars torn asunder, we are left stranded.

The sea is a vast desert, sparse and desolate;
One could depart from one end and reach thither having never quenched solitude on any horizon.
Yet amidst the infinite turf of our journeys our masts have collided and tangled in a frenzy of shock and dismay.

Oh, that your trajectory had learned itself to me!
That these hulls were permeable, that every strike would diffuse into the other and melt these wooden hearts to one.

But wood may only fuse where roots-entangled mould life compound.
Nay we are but two planks of driftwood, splintered and lifeless,
Chip-chipping away
Until one or both are thrown overboard, left to the cold mercies of these stormy waters in the tempest of our Love.

“The amount of it is, if a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.” - HDT 

I don’t understand most social courtesies, so likewise I’m not courteous.

I’m obsessed with the Truth, I love it more than I love you,
And I’ll tell it to you without thinking about its effect on your emotions.

I am an asshole because I honestly don’t care about you. I’m too busy glorifying myself with the greatness of my loss, measuring my wisdom over you in the number and magnitude of my woes.

I am a romantic idealist and I will push my ideals onto you and expect you to deliver, and I’ll make you feel guilty when you don’t.

I know the things that you merely speculate about.
But I’m clueless about the things you seem confident in, and assume that your confidence is feigned because of it.

I am a critic.
I will correct all of your misspoken words and typos and judge you for them. 
I will point out all of your flaws and fail to compliment your redeeming qualities.

I live below the poverty line, and I’ll tell you that I don’t believe in possession, but I’ll own everything I can to appear a tasteful and wealthy middle-class bachelor.

I will move away and I won’t contact you, call you, write you, or probably even remember your birthday.

I’ll tell you I love you, but really I just need you for something. Even if that something is just not being alone.
Because the truth is that I am alone.

I am the worst sinner I know, yet I still take it upon myself to be more than irked by the atrocities of your world.

I will influence you, and be disgusted with the way that I’ve made you and this causes me to be introverted.
It’s true.

I am broken.
Sometimes it hurts, but mostly I choose not to feel anything at all.
But I claim full responsibility for the results of my brokenness, to add it to the weight of my greatness.

Even in writing this I subconsciously think you’ll somehow respect me in my devotion to honesty, in the exposition of my cold secrecy. Because I want you to love me. 
Even in writing this I am manipulating your perception of me, and you can’t stop it.

But the part of me that wants to be honest in outreaching wants you to love me despite these things, not because of them.

That same part of me wants you to want me to change and believe that I can,
Even if I can’t.

That same part of me is sorry.

I am a bastard. Please forgive me.

New compass mural I painted in my apartment. Eventually it will have a fleur de lis on the north line.

is a deceiver’s weapon of choice.

(We only hope for the things we want.) 

Hope will feed the desparate and add the energy needed
To hang on, to finish the race, to see the sunrise.

(Hope is selfish)
If we didn’t want so much, we wouldn’t need it.

If you want something more than anything in the world,
Don’t hope for it.

Nothing can kill a man more slowly and less comfortably than hope.

If I hold on to hope I let go of ambition.
I can offer the world nothing if I expend all energy in the hope that an offering to
One of its inhabitants is accepted.

 Love isn’t here to serve you, It’s here to serve everyone but.

So let go of hope, the poison of desire, and start making lemonade to serve your thirsty neighbours. 

My Three Cents: Calvinism and Humility

julienfolstrom:

Calvinism has hidden its irrationality and contradictions behind this claim to humility. There is none of me and only God. That God is sovereign and free will is vanity. In truth, true humility can only come with free will. It only comes when you realize you have nothing to blame for your…

While I think you’ve done an absolutely fantastic job of standing up to one of the greatest fallacies of Calvinism to fight false humility with rightful humility, I must plea for an ounce of pride (as is my nature). For if we have absolutely no pride in ourselves, then we have no pride in, transitively, God’s creation. While I understand the need for consistency in a well-written essay, I’d like to argue that the Truth is not that we just suck, but that we are powerful beyond the wildest reaches of our imaginations, as we were created. There is hope in the good of man to choose what is best daily, to create in the traditions of his Maker, to manifest God presently in the choice of Love. While the truth is that we fail to do this more often than not, the most constructive forgiveness comes not from the pearly gates, but from the sinner himself. And so is the importance of pride. If one can never forgive oneself, then one sinks where Peter stood, because one has lost faith in one’s own ability to do good (so is the danger of complete depravity), and so does nothing at all. When a Calvinist sinks, he usually drowns, for fear that trying to save himself would be claiming worth he has not been appraised for. And though this middle ground between pride and humility is at the top of a narrow peak with slippery slopes on either side, it is where we rightfully stand; humbly trying to forgive ourselves for what we swore we’d never do, and taking pride in the fact that we have the power to do anything at all.

There’s a rythm in the way our eyes shift about the room when our thoughts roll across them.
We look to the walls for inspiration that our possessions had forgotten.
Our minds stop the cogs of the present to recall our memory, and our ears remember the sound of the encroaching anomaly.
Nothing could replace the fear that takes our hearts captive when we find, beneath and behind, that they aren’t fully protected.
The insides of our arms and chests are hollow where they once felt contact, and our rootless hands keep close to fill the space between our shoulders.
There’s a percussion in the way our feet roll across the floor as we pace between the parapets of our rooms, dawdling in contempt.

There’s a melody in the keening of our hearts as the grumbles echo painfully down the halls of our throats.

There is music in the silence, I’m convinced, of our reactions to the failure of maintaining our lives. It is the delicately wrapped bandage to the open sores of our hearts, lightly doused in peroxide.

You would do well just to sit and listen.

I am an architect. Watch how I disconnect.
How I build these walls to house my soul
And save me from the elements.

There is no door on my house.
You can’t get in, and I can’t get out.

There is no door on my house. 
I’ve trapped myself in, in living without.

I am an architect. Building a parapeine.