I been living in darkness everyday. I feel like I’m hexed — a tainted soul laced with alcohol, grief and the misanthropic byproducts that come with them both. Think objectively for a minute about your own proximal relationships with people you see everyday and those who you may have not seen for lengths at a time, but the bonds are still strikingly strong. Understand, these are people I was comfortable enough to fight with, shared a residence with, a woman I’ve had an emotional/intimate relationship with. The emptiness is unbearable; the fact that I’ll never be able to interact with these people is fucking unfulfilling, to say the least. I fear I will never be able to let these things go, mostly because I often feel responsible and that it will torture me as long as I breathe. I seek the kind of resolution and closure I’ll never receive as long as I live. It happens when it wants. Tragedy, desensitized tragedy. Accidents, wrong places, wrong times.. and violence, mostly violence. Too many of my niggas were baptized by others bullets and in their own blood. No cases of natural causes, or old age. Dying young is the new standard. I’m an optimist, an optimist who knows things might get better, but I’m also wreck, the worst kind of wreck too, the kind who hides his feelings in bottles of Hennessy and snide passive aggressiveness. I want love, we can all use love, but I want appreciation a little more. I want to be understood more than anything else. I need the kind of validation I got from the people I lost. I think I just need balance, I’d settle for vague consistency, something I can control indefinitely; sometimes I wake up a humanitarian, sometimes I wake up a sociopath. My friends tell me I look depressed, but I’m not a therapist. I don’t know what depressed looks like, I don’t know what it feels like. I just know I want to find a way to normalize my pain and flick middle fingers at everyone who I make eye contact with. It’s 9 am and I haven’t slept; I’m up and I’ve been up, drunk and baggy eyed for hours writing this mini manifesto, partially for retention, partially to ease my soul. Although, like most self gratification, easing is only temporary. These things, these thoughts, these losses will all return with a discriminating vengeance. I just really want to find a way to normalize my pain and flick middle fingers at everyone who I make eye contact with.