Harvest a future

Going back to where you came from is supposed to bring with it a sense of movement, a sense of traveling forward in time, a sense that you did the right thing by putting one foot in front of the other. That was what I hoped for with my trip to Grand Rapids. I hoped that the chapter I had closed would write an ending for itself.

In a sense, it did. I traded the albatross around my neck for an iron weight within my heart. I guess I got the closure I was seeking. I got the affirmation that I had left something that could give me no more... affirmation that my happiness lay elsewhere. I confirmed that the life I was seeking wasn't a life that I could carve out from the cobblestone streets of a worn out Michigan town.

But I walked away heavier. I walked away burdened by the fear that the new path I'm on isn't any better than the old one. I didn't wonder whether I had made a mistake by leaving Grand Rapids. I wondered whether I was just living a different mistake. The thought that you never really know what you're doing until you die is a concern that's traveled with me since that trip. Total. Mindfuck.

One of my goals while there was to collect the rest of my belongings - the final vestiges of a life recalled in muddled memories of soaring happiness and extreme depths of sorrow. I sat and I pored through a box of my "art." I used to write, you know? But that was a long time ago when I was a different person... when I had passions and actually gave a shit about something. More than anything, that trip made me realize that I'm pretty dead inside.

I move forward through this world, indelibly touching those I come across, yet never touching myself. Never feeling more than a light flutter within. It's strange to look back at that sad, angry poet. I'm almost envious. The crushing misery was something. I don't know what this is. It's a semblance of a life. I go through the steps necessary to be self-contained, self-sufficient... but I'm merely a caricature of who I used to be. I'm merely a sketch of a rich and brilliant tapestry.

I don't really know how a person gets this way. I don't really understand the depths of self-loathing that are needed to erode a vibrant being within. Yet somehow, that's me. That's what I've become. I can't stare too long at it because the realization of how fucked up I am that happens over and over again is so painful that I only recede further within myself.

What I do know is that I need to change something. I need to feel again. I mean truly feel - so deeply connecting to something that it electrifies every molecule within your body, you tingle with the force of that passion, that knowing - I know that that's something I need. I can't tell you how to get it... I can't tell me how to get it.

So here's my project... here's my proposal: I use the past to harvest a future. I'd like to put all that art - those passionate memoirs of the person I used to be - out there for the world to see. In so doing, I have some vague hope that it'll spark something within and I'll regain a bit of who I was, who I am... who I should be. I mean, I don't know.... but here goes nothing.