"I never learned to count my blessings, I choose instead to dwell in my disasters"

Meaningless mouths and arbitrary arms;
Talking without truth, caressing without compassion;
Holding but hindering, embracing but encumbering.
Truthfully, typical and trivial.
You-
Repulsed, repelled, but not resisting.
Inevitably impressible, calmly coerced.

And then thoughts turn to an invisible place
a place which you've striven so ardently,
so strongly
to prevent them from straying.
And maybe this place is trivial too.
But in this moment seems so meaningful,
for if it held no meaning
why would your thoughts now stray there?
(Why would it exist at all?)
Why? In an instance of such specific actions,
why the twinge of heart-strings?
Why the image of another,
of one who you've managed
so well thus far
to snuff out?
Why the saline excretions from night-blinded eyes,
now wetting substance-flushed cheeks?
Oh these embittered tears
that nullify the indifference which you hoped was passive.
Which you believed was real
but was, it seems, quite deliberate-
quite illusory.
Those salty streams
that give this convincedly trivial place meaning again.
That insist you be aware of its existence,
this place you've striven to ignore.
The feelings it creates and evokes
and the person who created it.

---------------------------------------------------------

You look at this immediate other and know, "I don't want this"
but let it occur nonetheless.
Let it all occur, always, every time.
And why?
Because it might mean you aren't feeling those confused things anymore?
Because it might mean you really don't care?
Because it might prove all of that which you've tried to convince yourself of?
Things about yourself (beautiful, sex-appealing, interesting)
Things about your feelings (indifference, freedom, contentment)
When all it really does is illustrate your inherent inability to not feel
To not want more than this
To not want something real
Someone real
To BE real.
All it really does is bring to light things striven to avoid.
Thoughts about yourself (objectified, morality)
Thoughts about feelings (shit, shit, shit)
And that need for realness, that you almost wish didn't exist, now screams louder than ever.
And how do you strive for this kind of realness, how do you find it other than to persue love?
That fucking abstraction you've come to resent, to resist, to avoid, to abhor.
That has always eluded you. Has always screwed you. Has taunted and pursued you.
Maybe luck will come one day
Or maybe time will tell
Maybe something will once be real
And you will be real.

***

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit... "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a [child] loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
-The Velveteen Rabbit