Staring Contest

I cannot sleep.

So much has happened in this relatively un eventful life of mine. Really there is nothing different from the next life that is being lived. I’ve got a little girl I adore but that is nothing new to the world. There are very many proud fathers.

I love someone very much, but love is not something that we haven’t heard of before in this life of ours.

I need more of so very many things but desperation is nothing that we haven’t touched before.

I have learned that I have only two friends. I am not in any way saying that the whole collective of people in my life are not thought of fondly. I am not demeaning the relationships that I have that mean something to me.

I was at a dinner today someone asked me “How did you and Nick meet?”

High School.

Nick has another friend Mike who I met back then and since meeting these two boys we’ve had 4 children between the 3 of us. It struck me that these two people know me more than anyone and we are all so different, and so removed from each other. I don’t see them very often.

When we lost Erich it was hard because he was taken from us. He was robbed from the world.

Now that Robert is gone it is a different thing to me since he chose to go. Not that he and I were close. We were not.

Investing your time into someone on any level who you feel a connection to only to have them be gone suddenly though is sobering nonetheless.

I cannot help but think to myself “Who is next?”

I mean, there was Tony who I barely knew who crashed his motorcycle. There was Ari who I didn’t like who got a bullet to the gut. Paul died in a fire. He is a part of a life that is long gone. One of my old lives. I found out this weekend John died of an addiction to Morphine. I remember him as a funny older guy who I couldn’t relate to, but I’ve had a lot of that.

Death is nothing new. Its nothing special. It’s the same as life. As birth and thought and light.

It simply is.

It’s 255 AM.

I’m making more changes but that is nothing new either. I’ve spent so much time waiting. Hoping. Wanting.

Nothing new.

I throw stones from my glass castle. Guilty. Self Righteous bullshit. That is me. It is nothing that I haven’t heard before but its nice to know that someone out there loves me enough to tell me. No one ever did or ever could with such conviction.

I was cleaning the house today, and I’ve tried to clean this fucking place for so long. Every time I do though I pass a mirror and stare at it for far too long. I talk to myself and try to convince myself that even though the things I am doing have been done a thousand times over by a million other people it doesn’t mean that the effort I am making is pointless. I try to tell the mirror that I need to keep moving.

15 minutes pass and I realize that I just wasted valuable time.

2 years have passed and I’ve got nothing to show for it. That is the longest time I have ever stared at the mirror.