tags: despair

1998

October

1998 Oct 8
Endless Wonder

  I am to wonder, I am to wonder
Dreaming of finishing this book
  flipping pages until it's over
                         but it's never over
remembering flames, the buildings all lit up
amidst the burned-out wreckage

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2001

January

2001 Jan 17
Trembling

Holy mother of God! Why am I trembling? Something like joy courses through my veins, but the tears are waiting to fall. Will it be like this for the rest of my waking hours, to stand still, lost in a fog of indecision, while happiness is something that happens to other people?

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April

2001 Apr 29
The Flipside of Despair

  Hope is nothing but the flipside of despair
running on empty, still, something
burning like acid, chilling like frost
veins all tapped out, and yet you still bleed
you lie there all tingling
    upon bloodstained sheets
        no game left to play, the dice always come up snake-eyes
and still your eyes flutter open
        with the kiss of the sunlight

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2004

May

2004 May 30
hope (or the lack thereof)

"Hope!?" X spluttered, anger and confusion mingled. "Don't tell me about hope!"

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October

2004 Oct 13
Knowing That the World Was Right

In the light of day, my despair evaporates. with the sun shining, it's hard to imagine the aching sadness, the weight of 10 years of wandering the desert, alone and forsaken, suddenly coming down upon me in the middle of the night, unannounced and unexpected.

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2005

January

2005 Jan 25
masochism

On R's advice (as you can see, I am very suggestible), I headed up to the Central Coast and am hanging around Cambria and vicinity (which includes such places as Cayucos, San Simeon, Morro Bay, San Luis Obispo, Atascadero, Templeton, and Paso Robles, among others.) Mostly, I just want to stare at the sea. (There is clearly something very wrong with me.)

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2006

August

2006 Aug 3
perdido

the lost one
wandering down the shadowed path
2 days since I’d seen the sun
panic, and then
peace

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2007

August

2007 Aug 2
this type of hero

How much of your destiny is truly predetermined? How much of it is self-fulfilling prophecy? (There are technical terms for these things, I think, except I can’t remember them. Confirmation bias? Forer effect?)

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September

2007 Sep 23
letting go

trust not to hope
hope will have you believing in things
that have no hope of coming true
and despair is not the absence of hope
no, despair is hope so thin and frail and fragile
hope so deadly, so fell, so fraught with peril
a thread of hope so sharp, so razor-thin
cutting deeply, jaggedly, viciously

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2008

March

2008 Mar 11
looking back at the last decade of my life

It seems like an infinitely long time since I last claimed to understand what love is. There was a time in what seems like another lifetime when I thought I got it. In nerd slang, I grokked it, once upon a time.

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May

2008 May 4
all i need is a map and a set of wheels

Fear and panic in the air.
I want to be free
from desolation and despair.
And I feel like everything I saw
is being swept away
when I refuse to let you go.

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2008 May 6
get this right

I don't know. Maybe S. is right. Maybe the last 3 years 10 months have finally caught up to me.

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2008 May 13
time/chance

15 years: 5,480 sunsets
the days spin by, the hours whirl
blurring into infinity
and I can't remember where I've been
nor all the answers that I figured out
falling out of my hands
scattered wildly like spilled grain
as I was, so I will be
upon this path to nowhere
to anywhere

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June

2008 Jun 11
¡ay caramba!

Coherence is probably a little too much to ask at this hour, after this much to drink. Today I have come to another bitter revelation, and I have a good idea of what my trajectory is going to be.

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2008 Jun 28
wall-e

No, I haven't watched it yet, so there aren't any spoilers. I just read the review in the L.A. Times from yesterday, and it seems like it would be very much my movie, the way, I suppose, I got obsessed with "Beauty and the Beast", even.

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July

2008 Jul 31
the wound

As I sit here procrastinating, irrationally hoping that I can somehow, someday figure out how to stop time, it occurred to me that I will probably never be whole again.

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August

2008 Aug 16
route

in this voiceless silence interrupted
by the whirring internal combustion
engines, rubber running across worn-down
concrete, these assemblies of metal growl
past, slashing through the air like two-ton knives
at 70 miles per hour, almost
like the tumult of a rushing river
or waves crashing down on the silver shore
my mind lost in the eddies and whirpools
of wind and debris, as the sunlight streams
in, vainly trying to evaporate
the dark mood crouching upon my soul like
a gremlin ready to ambush and havoc

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2008 Aug 20
not in this timeline

a phantom lifestyle imagined by my fevered mind where there would be someone at home who would wish me luck and send me out with a hug and a kiss, and there would be someone to look forward to seeing once
it's all over

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September

2008 Sep 2
now I definitely can't sleep

I think I was supposed to learn something from this. I wish I knew what it was, though.

2008 Sep 7
a frank assessment

Now his failure is complete
—Darth Vader

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2008 Sep 7
subito

there was never anything more than fine gossamer threads of hope
fraying and tenuous, breaking, snapping, tearing with the slightest breeze
the merest whisper
more like a dream than anything else
so that awakening came like a disaster
and the dawn brought nothing but dread

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2008 Sep 7
2 for the price of 1

I don't know why it grieves me so, when I knew this was lost already.

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2008 Sep 7
lacuna

The mornings are the worst,
when all of the sudden,
you are reminded of all that
failed to come true, of all that is not there
all that has never been, and all that will never be

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2008 Sep 21
the last day of summer always feels so cold

It's been 8 years since this song was released by The Cure. I remember that the first time I heard it, I felt that it captured perfectly my despair from that moment my heart shattered 13 years ago.

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November

2008 Nov 12
milestones

What are the little worries of our lives, against the backdrop of tumultuous history?

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December

2008 Dec 2
doesn't seem like it's going to be today

This is my life, and it's ending one minute at a time

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2010

March

2010 Mar 18
it's always darkest right before it goes pitch black

I've always believed that despair is not synonymous with the absence of hope. But it now just occurs to me that despair is actually when you begin to believe that having no hope would be preferable to the slim fragile sliver of hope that you're clinging to, even as it wounds you with its seeming impossibility, like a piece of shrapnel inching its way slowly through the flesh of your heart with every beat, as your life's blood seeps away drop by drop while you pine away for something you can't figure out how to achieve, no matter how many nights you've spent lying awake in the darkness, your gut paralyzed, silent, and still, acid gnawing and rasping at your entrails.

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2012

February

2012 Feb 3
not in a good space right now

I am feeling especially futile right now.

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April

2012 Apr 6
a common etiology of anxiety and panic

Sometimes I feel like telling people "the reason why you can't sleep and can't eat and feel like your heart is going to explode is because you've totally bought in to the American Dream bullshit, and it's slowly but surely killing you."

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