Mornings are a challenge

Is the smile put on and worn like a pair of heels worth the work? This morning I doubt I have the energy to pull it off today, sadly all to common these days. My stomach is oscillating between cramps and loud noises, and I can't get warm. This is at least partially due to my heat being off, but nothing is separate, it is all part of my self. A self that is self-destructive, in pain, uncomfortable, burnt out, and struggling to maintain movement.

But that is only half the story.

Feels Today

This is how it must end.
this must be what needed to happen all along.
I... love you so much but know that I am not what you need right now.

I don't challenge you, don't excite you, and don't help you anymore
You have watched me grow up as I have watched you, so now all that is left is to leave the home in search of the next phase of life. The phase of life where we are 'together' is over. It has to be. My heart is aching like it is over, and I feel like I've been dumped.

We got in over our heads. We were actually about to move in together, planning a life together. That was never supposed to happen. How did that happen?

All I know is that you are by far the most important person in my life today, while your life seems to be growing away from mine. I grew my life around you for a long time, and you grew yours tangential to me. You have told me many times that it bothers you how easily you can abandon your own life for the sake of another person's. I thought I was aware of it, but I was wrong. I didn't realize how integral you had become in my life. How much I depended on you.

So I sit here craving your voice, your touch, your mind. I am trying to not attempt to pull you back into my life. You deserve better than me. I know this. But my stomach is in knots and I am afraid. That I won't be able to move on, that in order for me to move on I will have to entirely give you up, I fear that I will give up myself in the process.

I want to dedicate myself to school. To fall in love with the process of doing work. I need a project, or many. All the notes and problem sets and journal articles in the world will never replace the support you gave me. I'm dubious that anyone or anything will ever.

I am going to make hard cider. I am going to make whiskey, I am going to create my window garden, I am going to sell my material goods, I am going to ace O-chem, I am going to think up an amazing thesis idea, I am going to write a really good ES paper, I am going to do a legitimately badass independent project, I am going to rock my qual. I am going to rededicate myself to friends. Eliot, Aaron, Elaine, Brice, Dwayne, Tim, Hanna, and Liana. I am not going to go insane, I am going to survive.

Am I self centred? probably yes. But I'm at peace with it. I need to realize how important it is to myself that I be able to see people for whole human beings and deal with them on that level.

But for now I just need to figure out how to deal with you. I need to figure out if we can be friends. I need to figure out how to be your friend.

Mind Space Today

I'm taking a sledgehammer to my brain
nothing is exempt
nothing is safe
freedom at last!

taking one bottle down from the wall
i drink
red and hot it burns my lips

perfectly

the heat starts down in my belly
powering my every breath
seeping upwards, beating against my heart
tasting its goal as it laps up against my brain,
filling my neck with heat

it is hard to swallow.

my only hope is that this one final levee holds
the great flood that beats against it threatens
no, promises
to sweep me away on its hemato-waves
into the beautiful darkness of the setting sun

night is where the devil lays in wait
so i carry my offering of green and glass
in a shaking clammy hand
ready to ignite my offering to the devil
"one more day, i just need one more day"

those words
painstakingly engraved on the walls of my mind
shatter

sledgehammer playing out the role of my will
too tired to go on

I set the tool down, wipe my brow, and look up
the levee stands tall and bowed, a testement
to convictions I once had.

red, hot, rage splashes my ankle
a wave had crashed upon the lip of the levee
dripping early warnings down into my socks
into my sole, separating me from the ground.

it is coming.
there is no time to wait.
i must get back to work.

with one last long breath
the sledgehammer is in the air again
back at the work of undoing

in hopes that when the bottles of rage
rise above that final levee's wall
there will be no lies left

in hope that when the flood takes me
down to the red hot depths of the night
i will be ready,
at last,
to say,
"take me"

Porn: how sex is being used to ruin our kids

   It seems like I am not the only one who is taking a critical look at the use of pornography to satisfy the physical urges of young people and their genitalia, primarily young males. There is undoubtedly a physical response which could essentially be called addiction to the regular viewing of modern pornography. When this is combined with a little bit of neurological understanding about how the brain gets used to associating images and feelings, then building a mental connection between the two, it makes sense that young people's understanding of what is sexy is based on the ridiculous portrayal of sex in porn. 
http://www.vice.com/read/cindy-gallop-make-love-not-porn-interview?utm_source=vicefbus
I can't say it better than this person^.

Or this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRJ_QfP2mhU

"Higher" Education

No, that is not an allusion to a certain favorite herb at college campuses around the nation. Maybe the quotations are more aptly put around 'Education' because the paradigm for education simply does not work in the US. It is just as hard to make a living before or after college. Although most people come out of their respective higher education facility with more knowledge and improved skills, translating that into something to live off of is nearly impossible for the majority of young people. It used to be that college was for those who were to rule over the rest of the ignorant and simple folk, that after a degree from a college, a job was almost guaranteed.
After looking at recent numbers and trends, let alone living through my own specialized 'education', I have realized that the entire way we go about teaching people is flawed. Practical skills have all but been abandoned, and the theoretical aspects are outdated and unhelpful. People have more information, theory, and data at their finger tips than they could ever analyse, yet we still think that teachers can impart theoretical knowledge into children.

The Way I Love

[Updated]
Polyamory  seemed to me, for a long time, as something that was other and strange. I was raised in such a traditional manner that I could not see the content and form of the relationships I had with those around me as anything other than the labels by which I called them. Yet, at the same time, there were relationships that I have had that I could not label. They meant so much more to me than society allowed for. There were adults in my life that I loved and cared for, and I knew they felt a similar way about me, but I was stuck with the labels of babysitter or teacher. There was this unspoken rule, or norm, that I shouldn't have a meaningful and caring relationship with somebody outside my family.
I don't recall exactly when this happened in my life, but I remember that after introducing these people in conversations with friends and peers as their societal labels, I felt like I was cheapening the real connection I had.  So I abandoned that practice. I began to, when prompted by a need for conversational context, to label them as someone important to me. "one of the people who raised me" or "an awesome adult I’m close with" became the labels that made the most sense. When I look back on it now, i realize that they were my loved ones, more than many of my extended family members to whom I was supposed to have these feelings for. This realization was the start of my journey questioning who I was supposed to love, and how to integrate the people I loved into my own sort of family.

Being Counter-Cultural: a how-to

Is culture collectively self-imposed? Is there an unspoken cycle of peer pressure and conformity which reinforces our beliefs about the way things work? I started thinking about this a while ago, ever since I came to Reed anyway, and I'm not sure if I have even gotten anywhere. Within a few weeks of being at college, I heard a term I had never experienced before, Stress Culture. hmm... Stress Culture? that sounds like... wait... i have no idea what that sounds like.

Well two years have gone by since this first happened to me. I now have a pretty good understanding of not only Stress Culture, but also Drug Culture, and Rape Culture. These terms  describe an intricately self-organized system of beliefs, habits, behaviors, and customs. This system doesn't have a purpose, it was not designed by someone or even a small group.

It is the result of years of widespread cognitive dissonance. When we, human beings, hold two contradicting ideas in our heads, we have an incredible ability to justify this dissonance, removing the appearance of contradiction. When hundreds of people do this individually, within their own heads, then talk about it, both online or in person, a system is collectively constructed that holds each belief to be true, ignoring inherent dissonance that started it all.