Beyond The Storm

-The title actually was found off of the title generator. Enjoy.-

    I don’t know what it is, or what to say. There’s a feeling rattling around my chest like shoes in the dryer; over, around, back again. And then back again, over, and around. It’s not bad, these chunky tennis shoes slowly denting the inside of my soul. But it’s not exactly comfortable, either. 

    Ma always said that tea solves everything, so I pour some. It does nothing but fog my glasses and smell vaguely like watery plants.

    Imagery comes to mind, just like it always does. I’m drawn to ideas of ache, of the sea, of old brickwork and of polaroid pictures. Places where the earth has cried out and split, like canyons, or places where her hurt has exploded into the sky in the form of mountains or magma. But one that keeps coming back is a pomegranate. Cracked in half and dripping red juice and honey. A fruit, beautiful and ripe, but broken and covered in something not of itself.

    What is pain, if not beauty?

    What is terror, if not wonder?

Every negative I’ve ever known flips upside-down, caught in my cycle of over-around-back-again. The sky becomes the sea, the sea becomes the sky. Both are deep enough to switch, I think. Corals sway above my head, and stars wink their disapproval at being so close to the earth. The sea is pretty as the sky, pulsating and churning high over cities, skyscrapers with their tops and roofs home to fish and seaweed. Birds swoop low, low under the shores and the concrete, exploring this new infinity. I tear myself away from this inverted world and begin to actually think again. 

Pain is so pretty when it’s not you feeling it. 

To watch someone huddle in on themselves and weep is absolutely beautiful, if you don’t allow yourself to feel empathy with them. The eyes puff up and go bloodshot, the skin pales, the hands shake, and it is so gorgeously human that it makes me want to sob right along with them. 

It’s not just sorrow, though. Anger is like this too. 

The sound of glass shattering against a wall, the sight of fists curling into weapons, or teeth gritting and voices raising, it’s all so beautifully contagious. To get swept up in that violence of mouth and mind is terrifying. But somehow, insanely freeing. The question of ‘don’t you just wanna go apeshit?’ rings through my mind, and I realize why the Greeks created Dionysius. The feeling of being allowed to go, for lack of a better word, apeshit. 

I don’t want to go apeshit, though. I just want things to stop tumbling around my dented dryer of a heart.  Greed swallows, you know. ‘I want’ quickly becomes ‘I will have’. 

And back I go to the reverse-negatives. Not positives. Reverse-negatives. Just because I don’t feel angry at this moment does not mean that the anger is gone. Just because I can feel the glass of the bottle in my hand doesn’t mean I want to drink any more.

But there’s beauty in that… revelry. In that chaos. To see humanity released and completely unconstrained by anything is shocking. And by unconstrained, I mean unconstrained. No moral, no sense, just actions as quick as thought, and enough adrenaline in the system to move mountains.

I’ve asked people, too, when they confess these things to me. They’re just common intrusive thoughts, you know? The whole ‘jump over the railing’ or ‘yank the wheel’ or ‘tell them how you really feel’. Answers fall into a few general categories. 

1. ‘But that would hurt them/me/someone.’.
2. ‘Why would I? It’s not like it’ll end well.’.
3. ‘I just… don’t.”.

    Other times they look at me all concerned and let silence suffocate my question. It’s not like I want people to get hurt. I just want to sit back and watch the beauty that surrounds them when they finally reach their boiling point. I want. 

    God, there’s so many things I want. 

    I want this tea to stop steaming in my face.

    I want to feel so deeply and vividly that everything hurts everywhere and always.

    I want to feel nothing at all. 

    I want to scream at others and make them understand that sometimes control is just as addictive and deadly as any drug.

    I want to have all and nothing, at the exact same time.

    I simply… want.

    I guess there’s beauty in that ache too. 

    I know I won’t do anything. I’ll do what everybody else does. I’ll sit here like a good guy, dealing with these dumbass thoughts that beg me to do something, anything.

    And I do nothing.

    I just sit, going over, around, and back again.

    It makes me want to scream, but that’s nothing more than another ‘I want’. 

    But you know, sometimes you can benefit from forcing yourself to be empty of action, empty of thought, empty of soul. Sometimes good things come from it. God could speak to you, right? I don’t know. He probably does more important things than listen to a kid scream out to Him at a bus stop at 2:39 in the morning.

    Other times, though, that emptiness… it pushes you just a little too far past the point of tension and into a spiraling vat of burning neon. Your punishment for feeling nothing is feeling everything, and you’re not quite sure which is worse, huh? I know I’m not sure. Not sure at all. 

    I have never done drugs. I don’t think I ever will, if they feel anything like this. I might actually lose my shit. Or do something romantic and poetic like throw myself into the ocean. Or maybe I’ll finally get up and throw the dryer door of my heart open to rip out, cut out, expel that pair of tennis shoes and everything else that has been hurting me for so long.

    Maybe I’ll be able to breathe again.

    Maybe I’ll finally get out of that over-around-back-again feeling and just… God, who knows?

    I don’t. And maybe that’s okay.