Worn Feet

Brains ask for a moment, but is it really ever just that? Days of eerie foreshadowing in circumstances that climbs in intensity steps growing large and shrinking puny to a heavenly blunderbuss. It would be nice to prop for the ammo, but…you never know—I never knew this would happen at the end of that trip, done medically sober. A little over 2,000 miles with bad travel compadres and clear roads, and it ends peacefully in an isolated, nervous conniption. A rough arrival home until I entered my apartment and saw the return of a world; I didn’t realize I was hysterically happy to leave as soon as possible. Nothing a quiet like a smoke and some sleep, but symptoms seventeen through eighty, hyperactive pacing, amid hyperventilating, for example, in a fit of malice panic, kicking right in at eleven o’clock for a period no shorter than four hours. No run-through of life should lead to equivalent waiting for the meteor no one knows about and won’t know about until it goes cut-sies in front of the moon. Steady melancholy of an idle mind asking for a brain to use for spare parts. I’m compatible with no one alive in this state. More furthering the manic despair into a period of my feet leaving tracks in the filthy carpet to the down trotting effortlessly into 'why not' with a leap through the living room windows on the line. Talking in laps because, of course, I gotta feed the vibe; I numbered every pro and con for top floor window airlines, not a line, a lie, not reason to put on anything but cement shoes to strut down a short pier. I can’t write cause I can’t sleep because of nightmares, can’t make [Redacted] stop fucking haunting every waking moment. There’s fucking nothing—

“Why?”

Beyond a voice, not mine, inner nor outer. It was feminine with a two-pack-a-day voice box. One word, and if it were any more out of the blue, I wouldn't have been reminded that I had left the television on in the background on a show I thought I'd enjoy more than this behavior. Nowhere close. Searching the apartment, in the dead of night from the patio door to the laundry room, I tried to regain my composure with MORE MANIC PACING. With it, my list continued with, nothing ever fucking works; I’m not real—

“Why?”

What the fuck?!?! With the same apathetic tone like, I admitted to liking new songs by Incubus to my skate friends from high school. No more Zeppelin, huh? This inner entity’s interruption was somehow more intrusive, and I halted me to address the deep grip of curiosity. A mile minute turned to twenty-one lightyears before the end of this sentence, and only after that many minutes did my pacing bring me to the definitely factual statements that built this human-like Dr. Frankensteinian non-creation writing this. I restarted back at the top of these depressive affirmations slowly, with the hook dangled in front of my eyes. There’s no brain, only shattered glass and rusted nail-lined helmets—

“Why?”

Be—because everything is always too much. Lost in a bunch of inclinations, genre-less hints, on a loose grip of real life at the drop of an average disagreement—”

“Why?”

Believe me, I don’t know—I don’t even think I have a joy button. All my emotions are on a roulette table with the croupier slamming their hand to stop it when it is most amusing to the audience surrounding the table—

“Why?”

WHAT THE FUCK is going on—Point taking; thanks for proving my disorder argument. Is this your entry into my decline—are you my decline? A psyche glitch of psychotic depression—

“Why?”

How the shit would I know??!

“Why?!”

But—why don’t I know?! Why would I? AHHHHHHH! I don’t know, almighty voice of sultry darkness—

“Why?”

Because I’m fucking sick of thinking about it. Shocked yet?! Sick of being this picturesque view of the Lunatic’s Fringe, pretending it’s not a pre-packaged death sentence with battery fillings as the poison for the cure. I don’t get it!

“Why?”

Because—I won’t get help. Shit, I get what you are. Three minutes more pacing, now 02:35 in the pitch black before a TV's glow, the fidgety talking continued down the path of writing and the blocks that turned me into a default failure. The same non-plus returned to madness. Anguish getting saltier, digging a grave next to the coffee table for the writing career that never was. I blocked myself with exhaustion, strategically hidden from the rest of the list of things thought to deserve the blame and fiery stake. Hard to remain focused on the problem, recently upgraded from an annoying issue to thinking about addictively abruptly. Five books at the same time; no wonder. I never finish a book because I’m constantly switching projects and all of this and more since I won’t address the underlying mania between depression 1100 times worse. So much of myself was ignored to the point of checking my appearance once a week and assuming the mail courier was giving me the wrong person’s mail. The third topic of the now existential meltdown was as grateful as a transition to whether I have a goal in automotive or writing. That lasted until 05:13, when the days of being relentlessly awake caught me, sweeping the legs. I showered, set an alarm, and went to bed.

Bizarre aside, next to strange nestled next to holy shit, the next day, I cleaned, set up the previously procrastinated appointments, and wrote; not so much at first. I was still bleary-headed after 16:00, but the racing thoughts hadn’t the energy to spool into a spiral meant to encapsulate the journey start into my mind’s septic tank. It would return, I got that, but that wasn’t the lesson. Accountability sparked the conversation sensation. Just the word heard off-handedly during my walk past a few neighbors arguing by the mailboxes in the lobby, and the day’s assignment was a contract. Technically, I could've kept this in my head, given who I was negotiating with. However, the solidity was necessary, the feeling of saying it the way that has always been preferred despite texting still being too silly for me to take seriously. It was like a ‘proof of concept’ to the existence of Ms. Why, as I cultivated their terms from their rage translations, I had to figure out how to get the proper acceptance for their and a few others’ signatures. That wasn’t all. Far from the now thoroughly Infiltrated Sector that has the remanences of the acts of some Bandit Figure, somehow bailing out a few stability features I hadn’t realized were missing from my head—brain—deciphering device, second shrugger in the lone drunk tank.