The seams that hold a person together aren’t very strong, y’know. Specifically, they’re quite liable to any type of pulling or stretching and even the slightest tug in the wrong way will send your buttons tumbling across the floor. It seems pretty satisfying to be a button that spontaneously bursts from its threaded prison towards some linoleum or laminate or whatever, landing wherever you may and taking a nice casual roll around on your side to the underside of God knows what appliance. Tension and release, etc.
So, how does a person go about exploding. I’m not really sure, I don’t think it’s something you can will into happening. Though I guess bombs don’t really will themselves to detonate either, typically there’s a fuse or timer. Things don’t really explode that naturally, natural gas pockets maybe, but I don’t know enough. So, for a person to de-thread themselves, there probably has to be a cause.
Wait, is this another breakup post? Is he still writing about this seven months later? Can he stop soon?
Soon, yes, I’m thinking so, for one reason or another. I guess that’s what I’m writing about.
I feel like there’s something coming down the street. Looking over my shoulder and what not. I mean, this blog is the shrapnel from my first explosion, so I guess I can feel when another one is coming. I’m referring to a sea change, I guess, I think something is going to happen. Hard to put my finger on it. I suppose it’s because my life has been relatively steady for a couple months now, sure there are great swings of emotion and crying fits and all that, but on a macro level, nothing has happened of like, transformative note has happened recently. I applied to a job at the University of Washington, which if I get, I think I’ll actually just bail. I’ve thought about it a lot, recently. I mean, I’m not going to get it, and taking it would probably be incorrect, but I think I’m ready to move on.
I say all this even though Jane and I talked on her birthday, ate cake together. She said she thinks we’ll get back together. I don’t know how I feel about that. It’s what I want, feelings wise, but rationally, I’m terrified. I think I might need to jettison myself across the country to where there is no hope for anything like that. And so I’ve been thinking about this job. I don’t want to leave my friends, I don’t want to not graduate in May, I don’t feel ready to take inventory of this chapter of my life and decide what I’m bringing with me. But I think those feelings of unsteadiness, that anxiety, maybe I should act on it anyways. Because if I don’t, I think it’ll be really bad. Again, it’s just a feeling, but if I’m anything right now, I’m a little cartoon picture of a bomb who can very clearly feel that its fuse is lit. It’s a long, long cable, probably months off in the distance, but the little ember is moving its way along the rope towards whatever reactive chemical is inside the shell. I don’t feel steady, though I think I should. I think the Jane situation is just too unsteady and I can’t reason myself out of the nervousness.
There is, of course, the impulse to roll oneself towards the fire and just get the explosion out of the way. I don’t know what that looks like, specifically, some kind of self-aggrandizing, dramatic action or maybe dating someone else or whatever. And I’m certainly doing myself no favors on this end emotionally, my main hobby currently is drinking alone and listening to the most despondent music I can find (currently the MJ Lenderman self-titled and assorted Songs;Ohia tracks.) I said this previously in a blog post, but if I feel like nothing is happening, I’ll try to make something happen. And if there’s that tension of imminent destruction, then that’s only better reason to hasten the whole thing.
So, I dunno. This is just a feelings dump, I can’t remember why the title is what it is. But I’ll give you instructions anyways.
1.) Go through something awful, and if nothing awful is happening, make something awful happen. Kiss a friend, apply to a job, text your ex, whatever.
2.) Feel great shame about doing things you know you shouldn’t do.
3.) Drink at home alone and listen to Space or Lioness or something.
4.) Combine one-part mood, one-part alcohol, and one-part shame, and repeat step 1.
5.) Continue repeating steps until explosion, typically in the form of a sobbing fit that leaves you with some busted appendage.
I’m too old to be this emo. Oh well.
jeez, louise 