Stage Directions

I should be in a white dress. The wind, it should be blowing, flinging my hair into my aura, wrapping my dress around my ankles, and then blowing it away.

I should be at the beach. Not the bright, sunny, colourful flotation device beach, but the crashing waves, steep, crumbling cliff and scraggly grass kind of beach. Walking along the edge of the cliff, staring down at the churning sea, unconcerned by the fate of my white dress in the vicious wind.

Perhaps I should clarify. I mean a white dress, not a White Dress.

I should be barefoot, having lost my shoes somewhere along the way. I could not recall where. Or what shoes. Or if I had ever worn shoes at all. I should be crying. Though, I always find that difficult. Knowing that I should be crying, I am suddenly incapable. I might cry. Let's leave it at that.

I walk, barefoot in my white dress perhaps in tears, to the edge of the cliff. The clouds, for the sky is gray with them, they pick up speed. Rushing by, blown away by the vicious wind, I should almost be able to hear them screaming. I should think, Just like I can almost hear myself screaming.

There should be rocks, in the ocean below me. The water around them should be white, and frothy. The rocks in contrast should black, slimy and jagged. There should perhaps be some sort of poetic echo, between the rocks and the water, and my white dress and my black hair.

I should step, to the very edge, with it crumbling beneath my toes and falling to the rocks that welcome it below. I should think, Just like it will welcome me.

I should lift my eyes to the sky, I should extend my arms as if pleading for salvation, I should turn my eyes into the wind and close them, I should lift myself onto my toes.

And then I wait. I wait.

Valhalla

*footsteps echo*

Ummm, hello? Sir? Are.. are you here?

*silence*

I have a problem Sir, a big one. I need your help.

*more silence*

I know you'd probably say that since these conversations happen in my head, the reason you aren't here is because I don't really know what to ask you, but I would really like to speak with you.

*yet more silence*

I'm sad, and I need guidance. A reality check. Something real, something true. Something, something I can use to bounce back from rock bottom.

*nothing*

Please?

*The lights dim. The curtains close. The stage door shuts*

*footsteps echo*

This will make no sense.

How deeply ironic, that as I compose myself to write, 'Pay For What You Get' begins to play.

It has always been special, this song. I must have listened to it a few hundred times in the last ten years, but every time it plays I discover its message anew.

How apt, that the man who introduced me to it seemed to never stop paying.

I am afraid. Of everything.

I live at the edge of life. Almost there, but never quite able to take that one last step, and really live. Afraid that I may not be cut out for life after all.

If only, I could escape. The small things that keep me here, make me happy, temporarily.

Am I searching for a fix. Another fix. The tragedy, of giving up drugs to embrace the far deadlier addiction of want.

I could eat the world and hunger still. I could be filled to gorging and hunger still. A perpetual resident of Satis House.

The art of repression. Which I had mastered. My mind is regurgitating all that has been forced into it since I was four years old. And I am covered in vomited anguish. Decades of it.

I thought I was unhappy because I didn't fit into that dress anymore. The time I spent, wanting to be this thin again. It never changes anything really.

My best friend isn't here, for me to drown my sorrows with. Tonight I must find another way. To hide. Forget. Feel loved.

And I want. More than anything, to not want. I crave the absence. The silence. When my mind was peaceful. Empty. What will happen, when I have nothing to think about.

Ants. Mindless. Marching. Ants Marching.

Meet my magnifying glass.

Seeing is Believeing

And I light another cigarette.

The blackness in my heart. The blackness in my lungs. The stillness in my hands that brings you to my mind.

And I light another cigarette.

The rush of nicotine in my brain. The need that consumes me every few minutes. The absence of thought that bends my conscious to you.

And I light another cigarette.

The back of my mind, that thinks about you without asking. That wonders and replays and relives though my hands and my mind are busy. That fuels the need for something more.

And I light another cigarette.

And it doesn't change a thing. At the end of a day spent in motion I turn to switch of the lamp, and the light catches my ashtray. Brimming with ash and cigarettes smoked to the bitter end. A reminder of every time my hands and mind and heart reached for you.

And I will light another cigarette.

I am a Bloody Rock

So in light of my age and general coolness, I have decided to not go completely insane.

This was not an easy decision to make of course, it required much thought and calculation. Though having lost most of my mind already I am not entirely sure that thought and calculation are my best skills, at the moment anyway.

Anyway, the point is, I must behave like I have lived for a quarter of a century, rather than just a sixteenth of it, and it starts now.

In other news, boys suck.

Age is something that doesn't matter, unless you are cheese.

The Dragon turned 25 recently, though she wasn't happy about it. Apparently one has no choice in the matter of aging, no matter how bitterly you might complain about it to the relevant authorities. So, I decided instead of brooding to accept it gracefully, and embrace all the wonderful things that are supposed to be the plus side of rushing headlong to your death.

There weren't very many, and some of them did sound suspiciously like old people trying to hard to sound cheerful, but there was one certainly that caught my interest and that I was very eager to incorporate into my aged-ness.

I was told that as one got older the drama, the incessant love-lust drama of ones youth faded away, and was replaced with calm, rational wisdom. The raging emotions (or hormones, lets be honest), the do or die compulsions, the deep, soul-wrenching anguish, the uncertainty, the triple guessing, the 'should I fucking call him or would that be too needy' debates that keep you awake at night would all disappear. You wouldn't have to wonder, you would know.

HAH.

What rubbish. There are no advantages to growing old at all.

(So seriously, call him? Not call him? Call him? No, maybe not. Or perhaps I should. No, no stupid idea. But...)