April in Portland

Trigger warning for depression/anxiety... stream of consciousness, I wrote whatever came to mind.

I don’t go out much. It comes in bursts like ravenous binges... At home, I hide – in rooms: I hide my feelings; I hide from people. And then, I go to a new city, and I binge on going out. I want to walk down unknown streets, and see different buildings, different people. I stuff the buildings and the people into my face like food, because I want to take it all in. I don’t really know what home is... I think home is a feeling.

The rain-soaked streets call for my feet, and the stones glisten so black I want to touch them through the soles of my shoes. I’m out of my mind for once and it’s a nice place to be, and the cars zoom by and the buildings rise towards the sky and I know I’ve spent my whole life feeling like a hostage to life. That’s what we are, hostages... I know I’m afraid to live and I'm afraid to die... so I spend a good deal of time worrying about both.

Homeless people snatch my attention, not because I’m afraid of them, but because I see the broken bits of myself in them. I could easily end up homeless; I’ve lost jobs because of my depression and anxiety. I know this. One man slow dances a junkie’s waltz by himself while another holds onto a shopping cart filled with junk, but that junk could be the world to him. I give them bits of money when I can. One woman with glazed, baggy eyes chatters with an invisible soul, - invisible to us, but perhaps her reality is reality? How could we know? Trash pours onto the streets and people sit in it - they don’t know what else to do.

Anyway, I feel more comfortable with hobos than the people with perfect jobs and kids and retirement funds and mortgages and family dinners and gender reveal parties. And more than the homeless people, I love the pigeons, they walk with such purpose amongst the food carts, daring and dashing for greased-out crumbs to sneak in their beaks. Their eyes dart like madmen’s and I admire them: they can fly wherever the hell they want.

I like the streets because otherwise I just see time. I want to think of time as it is in my mind – I can go back and forth and it pours in different lengths, sometimes it spreads sideways. Time is subjective, even if it’s measured evenly; when you are sad time barely moves, and when you are happy it falls through your hands like sand. But time also scares me, because it moves on its own. In this way, I enjoy the streets, because they are a semi-distraction from time, which taunts and haunts me – as days and months and years stretch out before me like dead, cold cement. I imagine myself in front of a firing squad over time, and I never know what the squad will fire at first, or next – my looks, health, or mind, and this is how aging feels to me.

Sometimes I've wished to die young – only if it's sudden, and yet, I simultaneously realize I am afraid, and want to live til I’m 90. At times I want to fall in love, yet I never want to talk to another person again. I want to travel everywhere, and at the same time – I want to hide in a room.

I have been walking to this same huge bookstore every day. The sign is faded in that ugly way signs fade, where they go kind of yellowish. When I walk in the door, it smells like books... of course it does. But the paper and ink smell like other people’s thoughts and feelings - and for a change I’d prefer that to my own. The books tower up to the ceiling, reaching, and in a lifetime you could never read them all. I want to climb into a book, and become words – someone else’s words... and maybe one day, someone might pick me up, blow the dust off of me, and love me, in spite of my yellowing pages and splintered spine.

I want to know the hope people feel that makes them want to get out of bed and exercise, or have children, or dance at a party and all that typical garbage. I wonder why I’m writing a piece like this. Exposing my own thoughts isn’t safe but I still do it, because I think it is the only way... and I know life isn’t always safe... if you open yourself in this way, people attack you. The worst is when they tell you what you are feeling when they don’t even know or understand you. I think though, sometimes you must walk down the darkened street people tell you to avoid, and I believe self expression falls that way as well.

I avoid men’s eyes on the street and most of them pass by me like bland sandpaper. The women passing by seem to represent what I long to be, young and beautiful, or what I fear becoming as I age, thanks to a lifetime of body-shaming media that has taught me to hate myself in every possible permutation. But all these people, they have souls and thoughts and consciousness – yet they walk as if in shells.

As the people walk by on the street, I wonder why my mother had me, or why my father seems so content with building a house, and doesn’t hope for more – some otherworldly more. The-wanting-the-eternal-more sits under my skin and unravels and itches at any given moment, making me uneasy. I hate myself for my depression, because it feels self-absorbed, but I also see a world in pain that makes no sense to me; I feel helpless and hopeless with hurt for that too. External life seems like a see-saw hell show and people who appear content - are they the confused and the crazy, the illogical – the ill-lucid?  It's not me – with my antidepressant prescription, surely. I want to say life’s pointless, but sometimes I feel things that tell me it’s not.

So, I just order my coffee, and shut up.