displaced / disillusioned

Science touches our lives

There are so many different kinds of pills out there meant to correct the problems of living or of the human condition. If you are shy, you can take a pill, you can get help to be the person you really are on the inside and overcome what is holding you back. Everyone has some sort of neurosis, or issue, some feel that do not need help, some do seek it. Natural living? What is natural living? It does not make sense, it isn’t natural. Dealing with the human condition, with the day to day, alone, is a terrifying, terrifying ordeal. There are some who say, oh, I do not need outside help, or help from a pill, I am strong and fully capable. Are these people really as strong as they think? Human interaction is so amazingly complex, there are so many things that can happen, and the sad fact is that most people are struggling on the inside. People are afraid, or nervous, nervous and hurt. Science is absolutely key in today’s society where, finally, a person’s mind is beginning to be something that is taken into consideration when it comes to work, to school, to dealing with people in general. There is a real you buried underneath whatever secret or not so secret neuroses or whatever it is that you have. I am not suggesting, hey, let’s throw medication down from prop planes, let’s save the world through science. In this age, and amazingly so, the mental sciences or still looked upon with a quiet and reserved doubt, that, this could not possibly be as serious as it is. But, it is serious. There is still stigma. People should not take medication, or, medication is a crutch, or, well, so many things, so many things from so many sad people caught in the past. We’re finally getting to a point where science is helping us to become who we really are meant to be, and not some sad shell of a person who hides their real self away and puts on personas for the sake of other people.

Clearly, pharmaceuticals aren’t the answer to everything, and so many mistakes have been made in regards to them. The last thing we need is more Ritalin prescriptions for kids or young adults, wherein the doctor can’t spend the time to really figure out what’s going on and would rather throw a pill at someone.

What I”m really trying to say is, the judgments and the fear of pharmaceuticals needs to stop. This is not witchcraft. These are real things that can and do help people who really do want to be helped, people who can take a pill and feel more comfortable, more like themselves, and more able to interact with their fellow humans without all the fear. Imagine what it would be like if more people weren’t so afraid to get help or to take a pill. When you take medication, it does not turn you in to some strange, bizzaro form of yourself (unless you let it - medication abuse is something that really hurts the message) it only helps you to become free of your mental chains and lets you reach out, have normal conversations, love people. There is nothing that could be more natural and positive than that.

dear humanity,

time with you was fun. tonight, waited in line at gas station behind mother with infant and toddler in two, both crying, so that she could change bills to go play slot machine, babies left to sit beside her at 11 at night. relationship with you was fun, humanity, but have lost faith in you and do not wish to see you anymore.

regards,
chace

when you wake up feeling old

I will try to put myself into words, physically and emotionally.  This is, as it goes, not the easiest of things, especially for someone who can put anything into words but himself.  However, I feel compelled and I think it may be slightly cathartic every now and then, so long as it does not cross over into self-indulgence.

Presently, I am twenty-two years old.  I am wearing a grey t-shirt with a black cardigan over it.  The cardigan is slightly torn along one of the seams near the top buttons from my youngest sister jumping on me and pulling at my clothes whenever she sees me.  I have hazel eyes and dark brown hair.  A curious thing about my hair is that I have several white strands.  Not grey or shiny, just pure white.  They are prominent enough as to where most of the time you can notice a good deal of them when you are close.

I haven’t slept in what is a little over twenty-four hours now.  I am not sure why.  I am not overly concerned with anything or stressed out, nor am I depressed or lonely or anything, really.  I just haven’t been able to fall asleep at all.  I’d like to get to the bottom of this!

I grew up in Arkansas with the typical broken family.  Sad as it is that the term “typical” can be applied to a broken family just because of how common it is, but, so it goes.  I spent most of my childhood being hurt and feeling like I did not belong because I was so much different than my family, I did not care to be tough or prideful like my father or my brother.  I liked to read and write, I liked to ride my bike and I liked to tease my sister.  I was always very strung out and very sick feeling a lot of the time, but as a child I did not know what these things meant so I just kept going on.  Years later, when I would bring it up, it was met with mocking and scorn from my father.  It was hard not to feel ashamed for not being like he was, like he wanted me to be and sometimes I still do feel that way.

I have always found it very hard to put any of myself into something I was not interested in.  I had a difficult time with school, as you are not really allowed to pick and choose what you would like to invest yourself into, so I would end up attending those classes that interested me and just skipping out on the ones that didn’t, the maths and the chemical sciences to go to the library and read or finish some story I had been working on, or just sneak out and go for a drive by myself or with a like-minded friend who just needed a break from class that day.

I have also had a hard time really relating with people, feeling like I belonged in any one sort of group or situation.  I think these are the remnants of my upbringing and how it affected me.  It is not that I am distant - I am not.  I used to be quite shy, when I was younger.  I have come out of that and find it very easy to talk to people and to be charming and accomodating even though I never really use it all that often.

In my middle years, or, really, the years I am occupying now I would shoot myself.  It would end up just above my heart in my chest as I would decide that I would very much not like to die.  Disregarding everything else, it really hurts to be injured like that.  I am not even talking in the physical way, as it happened quickly and instinct took over.  When I’m lying there trying to go to sleep and I think about it I can still remember exactly how it felt, how cold the air was and how everything went silent, how it just felt like not existing for a few moments.  I closed my eyes after it hit and there was nothing.  No thoughts or presence, no guides and no love or light.  From that point forward until I woke up after carrying myself to the ambulance outside, everything just felt like watching a dream.  When I think about it, it gives me a cold feeling inside of stomach, the feeling you would get like if you were at a large store or a mall or a park and you lost your mother and thought for a few seconds that you’d never find her again and were lost forever.

That part above, that is not the whole of me.  I am not a suicide or a depression, nor am I the love I have or the relationships in my life.  I am all of these things and I don’t like the thought of someone reducing me to one singular thing, even if some areas may stand up.  I am a bunch of pieces put together, you cannot just take one piece and call it me, no more than you could take a continent alone and call it the world entire.

Overall, I am mostly happy with who I am and what I have become.  I don’t think I am always the kindest person and I can be very short and blunt with my feelings, but I don’t mean things in a malicious way and I always try to balance it out with absolute acceptance and care for people I really love, despite anything.  I’m an easy-going person.

These days, I feel a lot more free.  I love and I’m loved.  There aren’t any complications or things that are pressing.  I live here now and later on I will live elsewhere, I will leave my friends here and see other friends in different places and I will live.  I don’t think there’s any such thing as a persistent state of happiness, it’s just moments and short periods of time.  It’s waking up with someone you love or driving with the windows down through some deserted street.  There are a lot of terrible things that happen in the world every day, and even more that you can never, ever do a thing about.  There’s no reason to cry and scream and bemoan what has happened, I think you just need to let go and realize that your life is yours and the good thing to do is to just live it and feel okay, without worry of whatever the current standard is for what your life is worth.  You can cry and be sad and that is okay, you can yell and be angry, you can smile and be happy or you can just stand there… when all of that is over, you have plenty more ahead and it all belongs to you.

as it turns out, god is the sun

Things to do in Denver:

• Not be able to sleep
• Be asked to spell words
• Be creeped on by weird guys standing behind you
• Have stomach aches
• Be sad

Things to do in Tulsa

• Tulsa is a shithole.

If I were retarded, Tulsa would impress me.  But I’m not.  I would put that whole town underwater if I could.

I hate ice storms and not being able to go anywhere, I hate flight cancellations and delays, I hate awful smelling people coughing on me in the airplanes.  I would put all of these things underwater if I could.

On the other hand, Las Vegas was lovely and the food was great.

Coming back home tonight, as we turned off the bypass and into the first city block, the entirety of it lost power and it all blacked out at once.  It was so surreal to see a whole part of a city black out from the outside.  We kept going and suddenly everything flashed back to life.  Everything is encased in ice.

i'm not the ladykilling sort

I remembered the night pretty well because the air was so heavy.  It had rained all day but had remained hot, leaving everything feeling sticky.  I was laying on the bed, seeing if I could trace lines on the ceiling to anywhere in particular.  The house was old and being there had made me feel like I was somewhere I shouldn’t be, like I had decided to break into a stranger’s house and sleep in their bed.

“I think you should stay for a few more days.  I don’t have anything going on and I know you could use some more time away.”

“I really should get back, though.  If I stay another night, I’ll just want to stay longer and longer.”

I would wake up early the next morning and smile and say goodbye, she would walk behind me to the door and tell me to be careful on the way home.

I would think about turning back around the entire way home, those few hours, about what it would be like if I would let go of things that had happened so long ago, but I knew I couldn’t.

I would get home and it would be just as hot and the air would feel just as thick, if not worse.  That day was different than all the other days because I would spend all of it thinking of one thing in particular and not doing much of anything else.  I would be on my back on the floor of my living room, staring up at the ceiling.  There were no cracks to trace, but I would still not feel at home.

the people that I know are mostly nighttime folks

I thought that I would start something like this.  I’d like to say that this will only contain stories from my life, pictures, maybe a few things I’ve written and so on.. but more than likely it will also contain various rants from the day and “had to be there” stories as well as the occasional “I’ve had some to drink and feel the need to ramble on and on before I go to bed.”