Listening In

A: Would you tell me what disturbed you?
B: Of course, if you would let me.
A: What do you mean, I asked?
B: That’s not what I’m saying…
A: What are you saying, then–
B: –That it’s hard–
A: –are you afraid–
B: –to get a–
A: –to say more–
B: –word in with you.
A: –than simply I made you uncomfortable, that I made you “cringe” as you said. Well it’s hard not to be cringe in this life. We are carrying so much baggage around with us now, some of the fruits in the bag are bound to be spoiled after a while, they are bound to rot. It’s bound to stink in there after a while. It’ll repulse people, make them turn away. Make them cringe. I hold myself together so often and for so long, I have these moments when all of the facades crack and out comes a lot of my perversions. It’s hard to pay attention to a lot of the tasks and tools in the world when you are all cracked up like this. But you still want to live, you still want to say your part. But the things you wanted to say to the world when you were healthier and altogether more sound have left you, again because of all the baggage. Still you have to say something so you say anything, and this thing can be the worst thing you imagined, or the last thing you imagined saying. People turn away from you, you lose your friends and the truths you gain are not worth the loss. The cringe becomes a desperate method to test your friends for loyalty and to test new ears for viability. You shake things up simply because you feel so still, or so dull on the inside. You want to live, dammit you want to live, and you want to bring others with you in this longing to live, even if it means bringing them to a place where their own lives and visions become more unmanageable. Which in turn reinforces you caring even less about what other people think. You start leaving people behind and passing people by you never thought you would before. All of your former ties to the world start to unravel one by one, until you are left floating above and around everybody else without any sense of where you are going, but flying right into their faces sometimes just in order to shock them, even if in reality you have merely become a projectile of indifference. Was it something like that? Come on, you can tell me….
B: Yeah…something like that….