Auld Lang Syne

One of my five items I so kindly requested to dear old Saint Nick was the book. The book that has been floating around the ocean of the world wide web. The book that I mentioned to a comrade on a whim in our conversation, to give me a surprised look, whistle, and say "good luck, that'll make you miserable'. No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai provided another mirror into my own way of life, quite drastic - with me not abusing addictive substances, but the beginning chapters resonated with my upbringing. It is not fair to say I can relate with Dazai, but I know what people were warning me about. What a troubled, poor figure, and how his childhood and mine share that disconnect to humanity, the innate fear and anxiety. I too wore a mask of humanity, and still do. Although my childhood taught me more of an artificial fawn-like mentality than anything, I just roll over now even in the face of total danger. And no, I do not agree with all of his opinions on life. Yes I see the corruption. As I said, what a poor man. 

What was I saying? My mind runs a marathon every morning, blind and frothing at the mouth, paranoid and chasing a mechanical hare that stopped working years ago. There no track for me to run, I've just paved my own path with the skin on my paws. Tiring, tiring. 

I know someone who decides everything with a coin flip. I'm sure that is a common method of choosing which option to take when unsure, but my life has hidden this peculiar tactic from me until thrusting myself into the social sphere of college. Now I've gathered something more to help understand what kind of body I'm operating. Like a pilot learning the mechanisms of their aircraft, all the buttons and knobs to better control it.

I was born with a coin in my skull, and every morning it flips to decide if I awake to a consciousness that is hopeful, joyous and carries a desire to embrace life to the fullest extent. Or, the coin will leave a copper taste in my mouth, my body will be a lead casket and the world itself will be a massive sphere of displeasure and noise, the world as beautiful as it can be will be sucked dry of interest and I am left shivering in an empty desert. Not even the company of humans could shake me from this, when my vision runs dark along the edges. Twelve months of this cursed, worn piece of stained copper, inevitable degrade of mind and body, I once again am subject to the torrent of driftwood and stone that batters my body, as I lie dead on the shore of tomorrow. Like the tide, I am heaved back onto the sand, myself subject to nature’s calloused hand and either coddled or squeezed into nothingness. The coin decides when I first awake, whether I can survive without the constant reassurance of others, or if I shall plot my own demise. My body has abandoned all such notion of a consistent baseline of emotion ever since the first dawn of a foggy, young day where my mind grew too violent for the organisms in my body to handle, or vice versa. I was always at war with myself, sabotage and a sudden violent takeover.

Four months ago I suffered the worst injury that has happened on on my knee - on my body. However, this injury was one of the many holes of fate that plague my existence. Nothing terrible, mind you, as the doctor plainly put it that: once I was a child that was learning to walk, but my body and my mind were slightly miscommunicated, and now I am a larger child with odd knees that never did bend the right way. What a revelation! I was never the running type, anyway, my knees set me back too many years when I was on a too-tall playground. Patellofemoral syndrome it’s labeled, or what I’ve learn is the professional version of “unknown knee pain, but you are indeed suffering.” I walk now with rusted hinges for legs, a spine that cracks and a mind that does nothing but bleed a slow trickle of useless ideas. 

I write this with a growing tension of apprehension towards the countdown to another twelve months of being with myself. The day grows colder and the idea of being in another’s vision brings me to an existential paralysis. I’ve made my decision on what my actions with revolve around on the coming dawn. I need to live, or die trying. I need to find a goddam raft, I’m more wood than man how my skin has dug into the decaying pieces of a once grand ship - who’s ship was I wanting to go on? Enough with these nonsense metaphors…

My body is the one part of myself that has made me reach beyond the initial layer of existence. If I tone this vessel, maybe then I will reach a new level of enlightenment, and maybe then I can live, fully and with an eagerness to life. Like Dazai, I never felt human. Many of his descriptions of blending into society brought my own mindset growing up. “As long as I can make them laugh, it doesn’t matter how, I’ll be alright. If I succeed in that, the human beings probably won’t mind it too much if I remain outside their lives. The one thing I must avoid is becoming offensive in their eyes: I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky.” Is accurate to how I, also, learned to adapt. Better to be dumb and fragile, better to laugh in the face of putrid insults. Oh, how my earliest memories of friendship were steeped in the brutality of sexism and hatred, how I learned to take a stab as a compliment. Always laughing so nobody would suspect me different, always being an obedience student so people would let me into their lives. I have lived a quiet existence that loops on in itself, traumas and memories that never fully heal or die out. I have an eternal throb in my lungs that aches as I grow older, and the world turns regardless.

A newborn twelve months begins with how it all begins: I learn how to walk.