Island

I am broken inside my head. 

I'm not depressed.  I'm just sad so much of the time.  I don't know how to not feel all of the things I feel.  I don't know how to not feel hate and love and indifference and compassion and empathy and embarrassment and shame and joy and pity and vengeance and rage and beauty.  Everywhere.  Every single person is walking around with it stirring all about their being, coming off in waves and I can feel it and it makes me feel the way they must feel and I don't want to feel the way they feel.  I only want to feel the way I feel but I don't know how and I don't know what I feel because what I feel is all mixed up in what they feel and I wish I could untangle myself from everyone everywhere and not feel anything at all.  I wish I didn't listen to sad songs and watch sad movies and read sad stories.  I wish for 5 minutes I could not think at all.  I wish I didn't take all the words and dissect them and pick them apart and then try to rearrange them to mean something they were never intended to mean.

I don't want to care anymore.  I don't want to find a tiny baby spider on my windshield while I'm pumping my gas and wonder where its home might be and how far away from its web has it strayed and will it ever get back there again and if I drive off from here will it be able to hang on or will the wind knock it off?  I better try to get it off my windshield then and sit it right here on the ground next to the pump and hope no one comes along and kills its baby life before it's even had a chance to begin. 

A fucking spider.

Why can't I just smush the thing?  Why do I think it has a soul? 

I am a disaster.

I want to be like everyone else with their lists and their schedules and their nightly routines that involve face masks and bed time stories and lights out by 9 because we need 8 full hours of sleep to be our best selves at all times.  I want to wake up at 5 a.m. and run 6 miles on the treadmill, then cook a hearty but nutritious breakfast and walk out of the house with a smile on my face and a hot cup of coffee in my hand, ready to face the day and kill the tiny baby spider that has found itself on the inside of my window now.  Fuck you.  Get out of my immaculate car.  I am immaculate and so is my life.

Except I am not and I never have been and I can't keep up with anyone.  I feel like a tiny island over here.  No one is coming to my island.  It's all of overgrown and broken down and there are no pretty things here.  There are no hammocks to lie in.  There are no fruity cocktails to sip.  There are no cabana boys to slather lotion upon your perfect skin.  There are only fallen coconuts that I can't figure out how to get into and vines upon vines upon vines that hide this tiny little shack that I lay down in each night and count all the stars up above because I have to know how many there are and I can't rest until I've named every single one and I wonder if all the stars up there are the souls of all the baby spiders in the world who never made it past that gas station pump and never got to taste victory in a web it created from its own glorious body.  It was just smushed out and sent up into the atmosphere to hang out amongst the stars.  And that's where I want to go too.  I want to go up there and be a star and look down at the world from above.

The truth is.

I think about everything all the time.  There is never a quiet moment in my head.  That's why I need you to get in your boat and sail over to this island.  Bring your machete.  There are vines upon vines upon vines to cut through before you can get to me inside this tiny little shack that I have built for us where we can lay down on this blanket I've made of palm leaves and gaze at the stars together.  I will tell you all the names I have for them but you can rename some of them if you don't like them.  Here, I know you will know how to open this coconut.  Hold it to my lips while I drink.  I'm so thirsty.  I've been waiting on you to get here.  Now, lay me down gently and crawl on top of me and make love to me until I can't see or think about anything else but the stars above your head and the way you feel inside me.

I don't want to think about anything else right now or maybe ever again.