Centaur

I'm disconnecting.  I know that.  I don't care.  My life here is a false life, or I'm a false person, or both.  It's been that way for years.  It's been that way my entire life.  

The life I want can't happen here, not with my history, not around the people who shaped it.  Those few people are the only people I've agreed to hate.  Don't try talking me out of it, either.  It's hard to forget that you were deemed expendable.  I don't think I want to, not yet.  I want to hate them awhile more.

I don't want to forget how I was treated. I don't want to forget by whom.  I want to map every fake smile, and false greeting that was made, and plan my route out of here. There's a big difference between being involved in a community, and being part of one. Here, I'm neither.  
I don't want to be.  

Not anymore.  

Alive, Not Living

Having consciousness doesn't, by itself, prove that you're Alive.   'Alive' requires a certain level of awareness of yourself, and others.  'Alive' demands a certain degree of connection to both, as well.   I will never be alive here.  I will never be happy.    

I'm a stranger in this satisfied, middle-class beach town.  I don't understand many of the people here.  I like barely a few.   It hasn't always been like that as much as it's become that way.  If I had a horse I'd saddle him up, and ride away.  But I don't.  I have a Kia.

Is it too much to want a little more?

Write Away

Connection, and the depth I'm able feel it, depends upon how I answer three questions.  

Is there enough empathy left in me to extend to others?

Do I still care enough about potential outcomes to show compassion?

Do I have the resolve required to love again?

If you lose those, you lose your Humanity, and without your Humanity you don't stand a chance at connecting with anyone.  Mine is fading.

I may be turning into a beast.

None of this happened because I started writing, but it may have started when I began to write.  Telling the truth about what you experience, or what you've seen, puts a shift in motion that realigns the spirit that lived it.  You feel it on a cellular level as it struggles to regain the form that was lost.  You are reminded that it's a waste of time to seek anyone's approval, but your own.

I've wasted a lot of time here.
And love.
I don't get either one back.
If I can get away from here, if I can get myself out, I may find some elsewhere.

In order to feel the warmth of love again, everything I do must come from it, first.

I'm not sure I have that kind of initiative.

I don't feel much left.

In fact, I don't feel much of anything, at all.
Just the fading bewilderment toward those who participated in taking it away.

Natalie Merchant  'My Skin'

Katy Perry  'This Moment'