Memories are like eyes looking back at you through a window. Most of the time, you don't recognize them, but they always remember you. Most of the time they shout at you through the pane of glass saying that the worst part of you is the best part of you.
I feel people knocking on the windows of my mind constantly. Every day comes with everyday reminders. Sometimes I feel my ex in the pages of a book or in the poems I read and cry over. Sometimes I feel the hatred of unwarranted enemies when I'm drifting off, trying to fall asleep. The ceiling above me and the blackened mirrored screen in my hands become chalkboards. I write fantasies about how I wish conversations would have gone. I trace the words "I'm sorry" and "I love you" with my thumbs. I never send a damn word of it. I'm afraid of emotions. I'm afraid of truth and vulnerability and you hearing what my secrets are -- not to mention, how scared I am to hear yours.
The reflection in the mirror the next morning always wishes that I had drunk less the night before. But the night before he was silently letting all these mistakes happen. He was unrecognizable. I think my generation drinks because it's the only socially accepted form of suicide. It's like we kill all the expectations and inhibitions, and we become someone else. We become someone who can forget about the bills and the college debt. We destroy ourselves in hopes that someone who can openly express love and hatred and fear and laughter and happiness and cruelty can take over and say, to hell with it all.
What I remember about who I once was comes to me in phases. It comes in waves both gentle and crashing. I have days where it all makes sense, and it all works and fits some plan or design. And yet there are also other times my worse tendencies seep under my skin and wear my body like a suit. I get these feelings that I have experienced all the emotions a human could possibly feel and that from this moment there will be nothing that can surprise me. I get this doubt inside my brain somewhere that everything from right now until the day I die will just be a smaller and paler version of the life I used to have.
But it's important to recognize that life isn't just happening to you; you are also happening to life. You are projecting yourself out at the same time life is pushing itself through you. We humans are like moths landing on windows at night, bouncing off the precipice of shadow and helplessly stalled by invisible walls while we struggle to feel the light. We are the last leaves on dying trees, clinging onto memories of when the wind made gentle music of our companions. We find ourselves constantly falling for the same mistakes year after year.
Humans are like ghosts longing to be heard, hoping to be seen, yet all the while forgetting how it feels to be alive.
