Adventures in the Wake Library

I've taken to spending my Saturdays in the Wake library...exploiting the nearby Starbucks, comfy chairs, and pseudo-intellectual conversations from freshmen just discovering the total liberation that could be available if only we would adopt a more socialist form of government. There's a painting of a tube of toothpaste across from my chair that is so amazing I am tempted to steal it from the wall and have it shipped overseas to my god brother for safe keeping. This is the highlight of my week.

...

I am tired. In addition to the general fatigue that comes along with teaching 13-year-olds how to do algebra, I am tired of just getting through the days. In the way that most of you are familiar with - when you've gotten really good at putting on the face...and even though you can feel it slipping, you lack the energy to do anything at all about it. I spent the morning thinking. Because I know that I can tend toward the melodramatic. But I can say with absolute certainty that to date - this has been the hardest year of my life [sidebar: by year i mean birthday to birthday, not january to december. end sidebar]. And not that any one particular thing has happened that is altogether more tragic than anything that has happened any other year...but the steady stress (stress, pain, loneliness, etc) of it all has been more intense. And I am teaching myself not to be angry...at myself, for never really learning how to face it all by myself. But the lesson is slow.
Very slow. And I am genuinely proud of the friends- all the homies who have fantastic hustle and I'd hate to backtrack on anything they've worked so hard for recently - but I would give anything to rewind a year or two to a time when I felt useful in some way..even if only as the family comedian. In-house poet. Head chicken fryer. Whatever.

And that is a large part of the problem. I let myself become so dependent on one person to be my emotional backbone, and when I lost that...I don't necessarily think I expected to find the same backbone in the family i had left, but I know that it didn't happen. And even now there are only four people in the whole of the world that I want to speak to; three are unavailable of no fault of their own, and the fourth is God - which, should be comforting, but sadly is not.

Mm.

Looking up at the clock now, and I realize that I've been in the library for six hours...watching youtube videos and doing fruitless research. Time to go home. Get on the guitar. Maybe drag a poem out of my throat.

Peace Be