internet.

Liquid courage for booger eaters.

stowaway.

Yesterday I discovered something I'd never truly put a name on...a thing I've carried with me since my childhood, something I've always kept at bay. Yet, over the past few years it's become a harder beast to keep in check: Despair. I seem to have always carried a darkness and formerly it was something that I was able to tame. In more recent times, it's become unruly and I no longer have been able to prevent it from rising to the surface. It scares the shit out of me sometimes. I've gone much of my adult life without feeling things...it's kept the bulk of my emotions at bay, and replaced the array of them with one: Anger. I burn (literally and figuratively) every day. My body feels like it's wrapped in a wool blanket I become so hot. Critical thinking shuts off. I become solely a reactionary being and in the last two years it's pushed me to the point of initiating physical altercations with a few complete strangers. 0 to asshole in no time flat. It's a complex thing to assess, because while I've always had the void it's never driven me to such an angered state and living within that frame of mind for several years has brought nothing but dissatisfaction, no hope, and self-loathing. Putting a 'face' on this thing, however, seems to have begun to break loose some of what tied me to it. Crawling out of the hole...

disconnection.

It's become an endless stream of distractions. None of you seem to notice or care...and I'm just as guilty of it, which drives me to near insanity. It's as if reality has become this disease that society has suddenly declared war upon, and we're seeking to destroy it through any means possible. The anti-bodies? Smart phones, social networking, television, and the internet at large. Suddenly, there's a parallel existence to plug into where everyone finds a way to avoid seeing the elephant in the room, but you never really escape it. It's always there, pissing and shitting on your floor, leaving you to clean up the mess when you log off and check back in. So, what's the cost? Everything. These small increments, the tiny pieces of ground we all give day-by-day to things we know better than to indulge breeds weakness, and in turn we're destroying not only the existence of worthwhile culture on a broader level but our own minds. Learning is beautiful. Information is the most valuable thing we covet outside of our own emotions, but instead people pay money to immerse themselves in virtual reality to fight trolls and catalog their 'unique personality' by clicking the 'Like' button on Facebook.