There's nowhere else to go from here. I guess I look on the bright side because there's always someone more worse off, like the body they dragged out of the room next to me. I asked a girl if she was ok and she nodded, with tears in her eyes and sort of choked out while gestering towards the loaded stretcher "It's my mom."

She said "thank you" because I asked her how she was.

And the man I watched on the other side of the hall twitching in agony in his own world from what was probably a drug overdose. They're worse off.

Those were quick killers, the car accident; the shooting up. You didn't see the other car coming and you ignored the warnings for the drugs. Nine times out of ten, I bet you, he'll go back to them.

My killer's silent, too, but not so much anymore, and I wonder why it takes its precious time. It catches me around the corners when I'm pretending it doesn't exist. It reminds me: "Hello. There's a limit on your time. You can't run like the others. Or walk uphill."

But the X-ray came back fine, as always. And the EKG, as always. And the pressure was slightly elevated, the pulse was fine, the oxygen count was fine. But I wasn't fine. And there's still no clue of a reason but for the symptom: high pressure and a knife in the middle of my chest running up and down my arm from my finger tips, to my elbow, to my shoulder, to my neck and into my chest.

They told me I was too young. That's always what it's been. I fucking hate hospitals. They don't tell me the answer. Silence is worse than a verdict at this point because it leaves me sinkning in the timeline. Fuck it. This life is all I have. Won't you just let me live it?

I want my rainstorm at 3:00 pm. You know what I'm talking about.

At home, we have a little ravine below my house. If you follow it long enough, there's a little stream that overflows in the summer because there's too much water. Only last summer it was dry because we were in a drought again. And under water restriction. Anyway, when we do get our 1-3pm storms everyday on time, I walk out into them and hide under the roots of this tree on the bank until the water gets too high. No one knows about it.

But it's wonderful because the amount of water falling from the sky is just about the same as the water in the stream and all the energy charges together because there's always lightning and thunder. It's as if the entire world is charged with life. But I know that energy could kill me in a second since I'm sitting in water...in a tree.

If it does hit me, Time will flow away. I'm open to that. But remember, everything is the present moment. I have never really had a sense of linear Time. I just don't care. Tomorrow is just as good as yesterday and the rest is up for grabs.

Transfixion

It's amazing, the things that transfix you, that bring you in with the crowd, that shoot awe through you like a lightning bolt made by Hephaestus. There was a god that shot through all of us today and it was over the most commonplace of all things.

Hawks in trees eat pigeons. The thing is, we hardly ever get to see it. The bird was unafraid, uncaring of the crowd. He didn't know that what he brought to us was the wonder we had continuously when we were children. He didn't know that he brought all those children back.

Death is what captured our gazes, and life at its finest. The two grow on each other, feed each other, allow the other to exist.

Feathers sprayed everywhere, and cracks echoed off the trees and the walls. Blood was swallowed and the bird was satisfied.

It's the same story every time. I know it but don't like to voice it aloud. Jason did, though. "The people you love the most are incapable of loving you." It's true. I'll never get it back because they have nothing to give. Somehow, I think if I pour enough of myself into them, they'll give it back one day in return but vaccuums only consume and nothing ever comes back out.

Today was one of those days, when I wondered why I cared about sustaining the lie of existence. It doesn't really get you anything. Everyone dies in the end, don't we?

I got a message this morning. It said "I'm awful. But I'm alive." Unfortunately, I know what it's like to be there. Being alive but not knowing what it means, and being so curious about life's opposite that you try to answer that question too early.

Also, it came after a prescient moment. I haven't had one this strong in a long time but it was exactly as I saw it. That he was home, that he was messaging me, that he was awful, and that he wanted to sleep merely so that he didn't have to be awake. I wish I could be there with him, but that'll be a long time coming.

I think over and over again hoping that he'll hear my thoughts, "I love you. And life is more precious than you think." But nothing can change your mind other than that one day when it all clicks and you convince yourself. With Jason, I stop myself from missing the boy I used to know because this has always been him and his mind is worthier than any. But if you see the world more clearly than the masses, insanity is what you're labeled and that isolates you, so you see no point. There a few paths. I once took his. Then I decided to live for myself because that's really the only way you can. At least in full.

Life is beautiful. Sure, there's a lot pointlessness but there's a lot of that in everything. People ask "Why are we here?" I used to ask that, too. But that's a pointless question. The point is finding the point. And we probably never will but that's ok. I live for the little things and I smile at the simple things. I let myself get captured in the sky at night and the vision of stars visible, of stars too far away to see, and of stars invisible for the light pollution caused by Man. I let myself get captured by sunrises and sunsets and clouds painted on the sky; in rain; in the patterns running around the cement; in the currents of wind.

I let myself get captured in all the little things that add up to make one sweet, big world.

I wish I could share this with him in a way that would make life beautiful for him, too. I wish I could share it with you, too, whoever you are. We could get lost in sweet dreams together, and maybe it won't be a lie. Maybe my words and my love will be enough for you. Maybe you won't need or want anything else out of me to be satisfied. Maybe you'll be real instead of fantasy or the truth instead of a lie. But I think that's even a longer time coming than seeing Jason.

We're all alone by ourselves but lonely together. But that doesn't make it easier.

They say that time seems to move more quickly as you grow older, that you blink and a year's gone by, twenty years, fifty years and then you're outside of Time. But what happens if you don't blink? What happens inf your eyes are open and it all went by anyway? It registered somwhere in your head, but not really, because you were too busy living to notice.

I guess you can say I'm trapped in my head, and that I like it that way because there, Time doesn't have to exist on human terms, or on any terms. It's not even a matter of rewinding and speeding up. It's a matter of essence.

Essentially...I'm swaying back and forth, moving up and back like the ocean trapped in its rhythmic tide. I am Everywhere in many forms, like the overwhelming ocean; like the water that grows too heavy to remain in the sky and falls between the sky and the ground. I am that veil of rain.

I get lost in myself; sometimes I feel like a drowning victim. Then I remember that water cannot drown in itself. But another voice in me says "Anything can drown in itself. We are born drowning. So give your water away but never let yourself dry out."

I'll take you with me, if you'd let me, on a ride down my stream of consciousness. That stream is deep, more like a river, and to share it with another mind who can not just look but comprehend would be a relief. But the question resounds and I remain hopeful despite the outlook: "Is there anyone out there?" I've said that all I am is words. And I've asked if I am only words, can I ever truly escape the page? Do I want to? Should I want to? There's ink on the air and I trace it. But there's more of it on the inside, behind my eyes than I can ever let out. Will it all be left to waste?

When it comes to living, I suppose, everyone has a birth date and an end date. Everyone is given a timeline. But they don't know the end date, and so they live as if there is always a tomorrow. I try living like there isn't one, but I'm shy and I'm scared like everyone else. But I do know my end date, roughly speaking. And when you're fifteen and they tell you ten years...that's forever. But when you're nineteen going on twenty and the ten years is half-way up, five years and a couple of months isn't very long at all. So I can't understand why you waste your life and try to end it when you don't have a timeline like that. Wouldn't you want to suck it all up just because you could, because you can?

I tell myself that I'll beat that timeline. I don't think about it much. I try not to because the one wish that really came true was the one I really didn't want. "Send me my Friend or kill me." I guess I did get both but not to the heights that I was really thinking but who really knows what clarifying would have done when it comes to wishes?

Like I always say, I have hope that that date is just a rough estimate that I'll prove wrong. But deep down inside me, I'm beginning to get worried, worried that I won't really live. I'll never know what it's like to have your whole life ahead of you. I'll never know what it's like to be in love or to be loved back. I'll never know what it's like to have a book bound and printed.

So I go out and run in the rain until I have to stop because my heart starts giving out. Then I walk and enjoy the rain slowly. I remember the day I turned sixteen and the way I played guitar under the awning outside in that downpour. Then, when it stopped, the sky opened up and gave me two incredible arches of color sprawled across the itself, one on top of the other. It was the rainbow birthday. And there were nine years left. (Still forever.)

That was the summer the angels fell on me. I aceepted them and wrote the best I'd ever experienced. It was a constant frenzy of inspiration. I was feeling it. There's one reason I create: preservation. There's no time to leave an indelible mark to brand this world with of me. So I write that my being, or a piece of it, may live on after me for as long as Man exists.

I'm done with this day but look forward to a new one. I hope you'll be there, too, when I wake up. And I hope it'll be without regrets because life is for living and it's nice to be able to live like there is no tomorrow while knowing almost full well that there are countless ones ahead.

For now, I'm happy. I feel like maybe I'm getting my best friend back. If I am, I feel like we needed this terrible period. And we'll need some more. But this proves we're strong. We can bend without cracking.

As long as I have this, I don't need anything else. And maybe I'll want to try some things with other people, people who'll make me happy, people who will drop me, people who will make my heart grow, and people who will shatter it. But I hope he's there to pick those pieces up--no. Not pick them up. Force me to. Because that's what a best friend is for.

On the other side of things, for the first time, I feel like maybe I can actually love, or at least have the beginning of that feeling. Of course I don't trust it. But someone told me that falling in love isn't for trusting. It's for getting lost in. I've never been lost in it, but I think I'd love to be. If only for a little while.

And then when I find myself again, or when I find the world again, I can fall back into the pattern and the best friend I've ever had might just be there waiting, like I will be.

I think there'll be a lot of getting-losts. I'm ready for that now, I think. Maybe I'm growing up.

Like I said, I never have faith but I always have hope.

But today there was a whisper in my ear that told me to have faith in us. It was really telling me to get any, it was just letting me know that I already had it.

Not that I feel much better, but I have faith. And you know I have hope. But hope is for the future and faith is for the present.

I'm sorry for making you feel inadequate. But it's not the things that you're not. It's the things that you are that make me cry. But it's also those things that make me laugh, and it's those things that make me happier than anything else in the world.

You know me very well. I do feel like you stopped loving me. I feel like you traded me in for something better. And I don't blame you. But you are too worried about being seen as a liar and because you're so preoccupied with trying not to lie, you end up lying anyway, only it's to yourself.

I'm not the only one who said things in New Orleans. And the things you said are the ones that upset me most, that make me cry the most, because I don't know what they mean and I don't know what to do with them. They make me cry because I can't ask you what they mean because you don't know. So now I feel like I'm lying and it's not just to you or me.

But I know you love me. And I know that's not a lie. Even though I say I love a lot of things all the time, there are only a few things that I'm really serious about. Not that I know what love is. But I know what it's not, and that might count for something.

Well, you know me. And you know that my best friend is the person I love the most. And you know who you are in that equation. I've lost the others but they weren't real. The thing that hurts the most is that you are and I hope you always are. For once, I have faith in the fact that you always will be.

It's just been annoying lately because some people don't understand that my priorities are different than most. They don't understand that there are really different kinds of love and that sometimes they can be just as intense and mean just as much or more than another.

You talk about people hearing "love" and hearing what they feel it means and not what you feel it means. So here's what I mean when I say it to you:

Who you are, as a person, makes my world that much brighter. Even the things that I can't stand about you, because I love all of you. I hate using a word in the definition of itself, but this is going to be one of those times.

I love the way we work together, the way we understand each other, and the way you run after me and have made me stop running for once in my life. I love the way, most of all, I can put as much into something and get it all back in return and it's not a chore and it's not a favor. It's just gratitude and enjoyment. I love the way we're opposite ends of the same spectrum and how, through all of it, I never once got the feeling that it was over.

But what I felt like was that you felt that, too, or your equivalent and that it still wasn't enough. You know that all I ever wanted and all I ever needed was a Friend. And I finally found it in you and I didn't measure up. I never understood and I don't think I will. But you don't need anyone or want anyone. At least not in the same way as I do.

It doesn't matter as long as we're there for each other. Through all of it. "All of it" being whatever life throws at us. Most of all, though, I love the way you taught me that I could be happy standing all by myself. No one else taught me that. No one else dragged me there. And that's precisely why I don't want to lose you, because even though I can (like you said), why should I have to and why should I make myself?

So I'll be there for you after all the other friends come and go, and after all the lovers, too. I hope. I hope I'll be there. And I hope you're there for me to go to each time I get my heart broken and each time it gets rebuilt. And I hope the distance between is never very far, spiritually or otherwise. Like you said, I don't think we could be. Because the connection is indestructable. And it can bend like I feel it bending now, but it won't break.

At least not for good.