These past few days have left my eyes blank and staring.

Speech has moved too quickly, the words pushed up against each other as conversation dwindles on. Mouths are blurred and faces grainy while the voices behind them collapse in waves, crashing again and again like a trail of dominoes in an infinite circle. Everyone indistinguishable; phrases and sentences like tangles of transparent thread that fall and lose themselves amongst the cobwebs and dust. I do not follow the motions of the players as they straggle, laugh and triumph, it is all too distant. I sink past this theatrical spectacle, a viewer confused. My skeleton continually detaches from muscle, tissue, and vessel: I am deconstructed, I am losing my composure. My senses are failing, unappreciated and disobeyed. I can't help but wonder whether I am going blind, searching the images hopelessly, that which searches becoming weary and bloodshot with all of the wandering and pondering. Or perhaps I am going deaf instead, for all sounds are defeaning or muted to these ears, too fuzzy to discern the source though they strain to hear. I am merely a stunned participant; my lips zipped shut, eyes sewn closed, appendages in disorder and innards in disarray. I can't move, I can't see, I can't tell what's going on. I feel glued to the spot. I've missed the point, and I'm missing the present trying to decode what's already gone. Dwelling on memories and dreams, I do nothing but dawdle off-center, lost within the hollow cavity I inhabit. Every inclination I create, every thought or theory that evolves in my time-stopped mind flies off into the darkened clouds before I can grasp its meaning, before I have a moment to react. I am dissolving in the solution that surrounds me; fading from the screen where what I can't decipher manifests itself.

And what plays on this distorted television! Chimeras, vivid and terrifying! Reveries of faceless lovers, frantic games involving the capture of eggs, worlds of paper, decrepit arcades, lost hands, millions of sad-eyed kittens, jealous friends, swimming corpses and blue glass rooms... not one night of peace! These symbols plague me needily, grabbing at my head while I slumber and twisting the grey matter contained within into knotted masses of frightening surreality. What do they mean? Anything at all? How can I think about them and continue to eat, to talk, to see or hear? It is all abstract! It is false!

Meanwhile, an ancient battle still wages encased in my white skull. An identity crisis, maybe; a mental fistfight with personality. It's hard to describe, really: I keep experiencing these awkward phases where I travel outside of myself. I've been avoiding evaluation of anything I do, I have no sense of who I am any longer, only who I used to be. And I want so desperately to be that person, to be myself, but I feel like an object. I feel faceless and common. I can only remember and reminisce, I can't see anything ahead of me. The future is soot and ash, reminders of what has been destroyed, killed, erased. I am not plunging forward into the monochrome unknown, I am hanging back and letting it move away. I don't understand why it is that I am like this, why things must be this way now, but my questioning has only led me further astray. What can I do? I am bound and gagged in a musty basement of philosophy. When I clamor for answers, the chains dig deeper into my sun-starved skin. I try to scream but my throat is dry, and my will is leaving me.

I have said that I am happy, that I am fine, alright, good, you know. I suppose I've been keeping what's lying underneath that reply away from you. It's this: we say too much and too little. Often, what is said is less than what is meant, and what is unsaid means more than any mouth can utter. Most words are used senselessly, thrown about without care, while other words lay trapped in teeth and tongues, unable to escape. What is wrong with you?! Why can't you say what you feel? Why must pleasantries and etiquette get in the way? What happened to honesty, to truth? What happened to phone conversations that go on for hours with laughter and tears, jokes and stories and audible smiles? Is it carelessness? Laziness? What acceptable excuse is there for lack of genuity?

I am tired. I have said that before, and I mean it. I ache. I bleed. Though I am frozen, I feel feverish and faint. I'm never let alone, though I am frequently solitary. There has been all of this thinking, all of this planning... so many plans that never come to fruition. It wears me down, along with the rotting summer. The cool draft is comforting, but I feel it is late. It is always late. I am already upset, already shaken. Is this a signal of change? I wish I knew. I'm so uncertain as of late.

Please spare your sympathy and your kind efforts to relate. Just this once.



Though some answers would cheer me up...

i am not going to attempt to relate nor to sympathize. your words have left me speechless in fact. the only thing i can say is that i am here to aid you in finding yourself again. you seem to have fallen into that pit of yourself, silmilar to where i had been found, the path to which is more winding, twisting, and treacherous however. if nothing else at least know this i have always been by your side and always will be, no matter how far the space between us may seem.

wow what have i done im sorry if im not talking to you i konw what u mean thought it dosnt feel like we've connected recently the gathering was fun though.........eva im sorry if ive let u down in any way...........how can i fix it?....with words?.....my words trip and stumble they are not comforting...they used to be when we first met i remember when u were sad one night and i told u about beautiful fields and sandy beaches and i helped then....i wish i could now but i dont know waht to do

Well there Eva, I am deeply saddend to read this. I know we haven't talked much also. But I am always here to listen too.

I really don't know what I can say to cheer u up here because I realize I have this question about truth and honesty in spoken words too - yes, I have also been through the stage of confusion and chaos hoping to find some sort of the answer to those questions. Although I may not be of much help to u here, I want u to know that I will be here to listen - u are not alone.