I wonder how I could possibly open my mouth wide enough to let this great oil slick of fear ooze out, a dark gleaming bubble of oh, the world, I wish, oh please, I cannot read the news one more time today, let me wallow in my knowing that I am lucky enough to read the news, to read and not to be the news, to not be the bad news that goes unreported. and who am I to go on writing all my violent love songs, who am I to ask for money and for help, get steadily drunk alone in my living room, write lines of code and trace out shapes of old longings–

I get it, I get it. 

sometimes I think perhaps I owe it to the world, for all its kindnesses to me, to grow out of this maudlin disposition. to discard some malfunctioning part of my heart, the part that makes reasonable emotional responses and extensive political involvement and healthy amounts of sleep or romance impossible. 

but sometimes I think I owe it to the world to know that dredging my ripped-up heart up all over the place is maybe the one thing I can offer in exchange for all the meals and movie tickets and late night poems and long car rides and undeserved forgivenesses.

all I can ever do is keep on living through these big waves of emotion that scrape me along the rocks, the options are that, or to become one kind of rock or another. I cannot become obsessed with my own stupid guilt, we all know that that’s no cure for narcissism. 

I started out trying to say something, I think, but I had to pull a drunk curtain down on all the pain I see around tonight. Happiness does not come easy. 

what was it that Justin sang, so quiet, so beautiful? this is the world, where beautiful things and terrible things will happen.