wax museums

no matter how bright the flame, the wax always dries hard and cold.
when i was little i thought that they looked like little tear drops as the wick came closer and closer to its imminent metal end
but i was always curious;
were those little orange faces crying or just sweating?
a dark and cathartic realization of their finite existence, or just, well,
the physiological by-products of their existence?
i want to be more than wax

I've thought about this for awhile, and decided that this is necessary to write about. It's more for my own benefit, and it's nothing I wish to receive "attention" for. I have a real connection with conveying this through the pages, mainly because I control entirely what they say. All I really want is to be happy, and I feel that writing this out and being open about this is a great first step. There's nothing cryptic about it; it is what it is.

The right of pursuing one's happiness is one of our very basic rights, yet I feel like it's one of the most difficult rights to obtain, mainly because it is all dependent on definition. That is where the problem does lay, and that is where so many people (myself included) fuck things up, and that is why most people never achieve it. What I am about to say is my own story of failed and stupid attempts at a vain definition of "happiness," and something to which everyone (at least abstractly) can relate. I'm going to write this once, and with each tap of my fingers I have no clue what will come out next.

Here we go.


Essentially, everything that has been said by everyone who I've hurt is right. I am cold, I am lonely, and I don't really know how to love. When I was a child, I would never kiss any of my parents or relatives, and I was physically incapable of telling people that I loved them. My parents' marriage didn't work out, but that's not an excuse; it's just one of the first places people look when they try to understand why someone is sad. Puttylike minds can be shaped by even the most crooked of hands, I suppose. But ultimately, it's still my choice. Each night, I could have said "I love you" after "Goodnight," but I didn't. The concept of the word seemed foreign and awkward to me.

And it's not like I haven't had the opportunity and experiences to alter that part of myself. I've had plenty of people who offered their love to me, who wanted me to be happy, but again, through my actions and inactions I've forced them out. And really, they should be out anyway.

Tonight someone told me what they like most about me is that I don't care about image, and that deep down I understand life, what matters most, etc, to an extent that most others do not. And I wanted to vomit. That flattery is completely undeserved and completely false.

I've always been obsessed with appearances, facades, and nuances, because they can mimic feelings almost seamlessly. I remember when I was eight years old, lonely at my first stay away camp (I didn't participate in any activities; I sat with the handicapped and overweight kids), I didn't like the fact that I didn't make any friends. I looked to the mirror, and wondered what was wrong with me. So, at dinner, I stared at my plate in silence.

And then in middle school, I saw all of the pretty popular girls with straight hair and puka shell necklaces laughing and getting boys to call them on the phone. I never got too close to anyone (even though that's what I wanted most), because I was scared of attaching myself and then having something taken away. So, flawed logic told me that to be happy, I had to be skinny. So I looked at my plate again, and began to hide my food.

And when I was 13, I discovered my grandmother's medicine cabinet. Stupidly, I started to read the bold words "dietary supplement." Oh my God! It had the word "diet" in it! I could be skinny! And happy! So I took it. I remember crying in her bedroom after swallowing it and writing a message in a bottle to be opened after my death; I knew what I was doing was stupid, and I just KNEW that I would die by ODing on "diet pills."

I noticed no difference in this, so I started doing my research. Still curbed my foods, exercised every night for hours at a time, and began taking my grandfather's laxatives and diuretics (one at a time so he wouldn't notice). I always sucked in my stomach, but it was never hollow enough. I remember crying one night in the mirror because I thought my thighs were close to touching each other, and that meant that I could never be happy. I knew it was so goddamn dumb, but I kept pinching anyway. My eighth grade health teacher called me an ectomorph the next day. And that made me happy.

Freshman year of high school came around, and people would look at me in the halls and point at my bony frame. My grandmother told me one day that she didn't recognize me because of how thin I had become. It's all the ballet, Nezzie! I told her. My mom took my hand one day after my grandfather's death and asked me if I was OK--I was, she said, "so thin." Kids in my geometry class whispered the word anorexic as it was my turn to find the area of an arc on the board. And I was fucking flattered.

But at night, I would still cry because I was still alone and my thighs were too big, and because my grandfather who read me "Caps For Sale" died and because my Dad was so far away, and because I felt like a failure because I couldn't even make myself throw up with a toothbrush. But mainly because I was masking my real unhappiness with something vain and pathetic.

And then junior year, I got the attention of a few boys, and I forgot (temporarily) about my loneliness. And I lost my virginity, and things were great! High school! And for prom, I saw a beautiful champagne colored dress, but had to buy a size-4. And then, I saw a picture of myself in jeans, and my thighs touched. Soon enough, I went back to those familiar aisles of the pharmacy, and proceeded to the self check-out.

Same time next year: same boy (cheated on me), same dress designer, different size: size-0. Thanks, mono. Something really fucking disgusting? I was excited when I found out I had mono and not strep. No appetite! Thin!

And then things were OK for awhile, but soon enough I found out my father had cancer, and how lonely both of us were. And then to cope, I shut everyone else out of my life again, went back to the pharmacy, and threw my regulars plus some extra shit into my basket. And I knew it was stupid, and ridiculous, but I liked it. I LOVED that I was "fucked up." And obviously, if I knew I was "fucked up," and trying to be "fucked up," then I wasn't really "fucked up." Stupid girl. But whatever, I liked the results.

And now, I am hypercritical and sensitive, and I'm pretty sure I'm lonelier now than I ever have been before. Sometimes I take rainbow pills, and sometimes I drink on an empty stomach because it hits me faster that way. The worst part is knowing what I'm doing, have done, and will do each step of the way. And I mean, I'm sad. But being sad is something I think you can know and be simultaneously.

But really, I'm sad because no matter what size I am, I know in my heart that it doesn't matter, and I know I really don't care about any of that bullshit anyway, but I've grown up with it and have had a really difficult time letting it go! I'm sad because I've figured out how formulaic and average what my real problems are in a matter of minutes, but it's taken years on my body to get to this point. Here it is:

1. Mom and Dad split up at age 4.
Effect: concept of love is fucked (my choice)
2. I live with my mother, see my father on the weekends
Effect: men are absent, and I don't really see hetero "love"
Potential future effect: my affinity toward gay men?
3. I move somewhere new, feel lonely.
Effect: excessive desire to fit in, to be wanted, to be loved
4. See pretty popular girls holding hands with boys
Effect: boys make girls happy, and wanted and loved, but only the pretty ones
5. Still lonely, grandfather dies
Effect: even more absence of XY chromosome, more desire to be "loved"
Effect: I fill the "void" with promises of happiness (defined then as thinness)
Effect: develop a nasty habit in pursuit of happiness
Final effect: push others away because ultimately my partner of 11 years is my "problem," and the only thing I can dedicate myself to 100%.


Reversing all of this takes a lot of time and effort, but it's something I think I can accomplish, albeit slowly. Deep down, I know I have what it takes, and I deserve to be happy.

It's a work in progress, but it's progress. And that's all that really counts, isn't it?

Sometimes, I worry to myself that I'll never really know the man whose blood flows through mine, and that he'll fade quietly into the night, alone in his peninsula. And I worry even more not about how I will respond, but how I just may not. I don't really know my father, and I feel like I don't really know myself, and any of my subsequent actions or inactions are just some ruse to cover the ugly holes in the floor of my heart. I would think I'm numb, but that would require a little less feeling and a lot less tears. I'm not asking for pity. There's really no colorful language I can use to describe it, to pretty it up a bit and make myself seem more polished and fucking pristine. I hate talking about it because I refuse to make myself vulnerable and will never ever let anyone see me cry. I am cold, and it breaks my tight fisted heart that I know more about my father's ailments than I do his life. And I worry that I can never know myself, because I don't know who and what is inside of me. I wish this would stop, I really do, but how do you fill something that has no end? I don't know to whom I am speaking, and why I give two shits about where I place my prepositions right now, and why this seems to have manifested itself so quickly and abruptly. Fuck, I don't even know what "it" or "this" is. That's the scariest part.

King Glenn's Word

Once upon a time there was a white haired king named Glenn Beck who lived atop a hill made of white sand. His voice was loud and shrill, and when he barked and stomped his scepter the entire city could hear it. It wasn't a question of being able to hear it, but being able to avoid it. Even the fishermen working miles away at the wharf were susceptible to this mad king's rants.

One day, King Glenn heard of a neighboring village's new efforts at spreading a sense of community, responsibility, and charity. Glenn hated this, because to him, ideas (especially benevolent ones) spread like disease, and he did not, under any circumstances, desire that the lowly peons in his town would help each other. Secretly, it was because Glenn was worried that once there was a united village, they might see past his ivory locks and may not be so intimidated by his ethereal castle made of sand. Striking his scepter violently on his marble floor, he spat and shouted:

IT'S PROPAGANDA, IT IS ALL PROPAGANDA! ALL OF THE GOD-LOVING CITIZENS OF MY KINGDOM SHALL NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, VOLUNTEER! WE SHALL NOT HELP OTHERS, IT IS THE DEVIL'S WORK AND WE SHALL NOT HAVE ANY PART OF IT.

Citizens stopped what they were doing at once: the bakers stopped baking, the fishermen stopped fishing, and the teachers stopped teaching. They were all startled. A young boy who was helping an old woman with her groceries dropped the bag at once, frowned, and ran away. What is volunteerism, the townspeople wondered? Isn't everything we do for one another some form of it? Out of fear of King Glenn, the villagers retreated into their homes and lived in silence, only attentive to the King's daily shouts and decries against humanity. Soon enough, the entire kingdom was in disarray.

Upon hearing of the kingdom's weakening bloodline, many other neighboring kingdoms became interested in pursuing it, and claiming it as their own. One day, as King Beck was staring out the window of his castle, he saw an army from a neighboring village appear in the horizon. The black line seemed as though it would never end. King Glenn, alone in his castle made of sand, began to worry. He looked down to his kingdom; no one was wandering the streets, all doors to homes and buildings were closed. He violently struck his staff once more and said:

CITIZENS, AN ARMY FROM THE NEIGHBORING VILLAGE HAS ENTERED OUR BORDERS. I REQUIRE YOU AT ONCE TO VACATE YOUR HOMES, AND HELP DEFEND OUR BELOVED KINGDOM!

Surely, thought Beck, they would listen. He licked the white spittle from the sides of his cracked lips, and watched out the window with anticipation. In his mind, he saw townspeople, men, women, children, the elderly, all pouring out of their houses like his little and mindful ants (as he so desired them to be) with weapons, fighting the King's war.

But no one came, and the lights in the houses remained shut. The army drew closer. He struck his staff again.

CITIZENS, IF YOU LOVE GOD, YOU WILL COME OUT THIS INSTANT AND SAVE OUR KINGDOM.

He struck his staff the hardest he ever did, and all of a sudden, things started to shake. King Glenn looked up, and he saw his chandelier start to rattle. And then, he saw his saucers tremble. And before he knew it, his sand castle began to crumble.

From their window, the townspeople gasped as the immaculate castle fell to pieces, and watched in terror as the king (or so they thought, it was hard to discern him from the sand), struggled and choked in the mass avalanche, crying (from what they could hear, that is, it was rather muffled): Help me! Help me!

A little boy tried to run up to the top of the once-hill, but his mother stopped him. Son, she said, we are not to help others. It is the order of the King.

The little boy stopped, sighed, and went back to his playthings.

The army continued to march, however no blood had to be shed. After all, the king died by his own hand.

A few months later, as new rule had been established, the late King's thoughts had come true: the idea of volunteerism did spread, and citizens raked up the sand together from the fallen castle and transplanted it to the beaches. One person raised question, saying they should not just toss away this sand; it was special, he said.

"Don't be daft," said the next, "sand is sand. Anyone can build a castle from it, but it will never last. Now here, help me with this shovel."

And the other man did, and soon enough, King Beck's marvels, both his word and his palace, were but tiny white granules of nothingness, soon to be forgotten by all.