The Post-Whatever Blues

I’ve got the post-whatever blues. Don’t even know what they’re about. Couldn’t tell you if I gave it a long hard thought. But they’re there. As sure as I was content just an hour ago, now I find myself on the other side of the universe balancing the scales of emotional justice. Not too much for you. You’re not here to feel good. You’re here to learn what it feels like to suffer. To hate your maker. To want for the exit, but not have the courage. Not because you fear what’s waiting for you when you return to your truest state. But, because you’re afraid of missing out on another well and good fleeting moment. Maybe even the occasional joyful one or the rarest of grattitudes. The “I can’t believe I get to be alive right this second” second, pooling into minutes, but never hours. Not unless you’re here for the opposite reason. For an existential vacation. You already did your suffering somewhere else in the cosmic landscape. Now you’re here to revel in the glories on offer, dark, light, and everything in between. Merely a spectator to suffering. A tourist of the great freak show. Freaks like me. Freaks like you. Who dare to want. Who dare to give a shit. To hold on, inexplicably, to something we know we can’t have. And that’s the point. The suffering can’t exist without the want. It’s old so and so. It’s never strange bedfellow of desire. Constantly kicking at it. Forever awake. Dry eyes. Dry mouth. Single-handedly keeping suffering from a desperate slumber. Screams and lashes, wanting it to stay, whispers and caresses, begging it to go. And it never does, despite its only purpose served dutifully as an empty vessel of false hopes. Now and then, the drugs good, the drugs bad, parade their way through the room. Making a fuss, scrambling up and down the hall. Breaching the doorway only at random. Seldom a mercy. A handful of generosities born only of pity and mutual benefit. Once in a lifetime opportunities, never making good on their claims. Unless… that’s your story. One of the lucky few here for both. Pain to euphoria. Rags to riches. A sad story with a happy ending. But, I can’t want for that. It only amplifies the unchanging. But, I’ll kick back at the unmoving lump in bed next to me. Ask it to go join the parade next time it appears. I don’t need any of it. What I want is quiet. What I need is an end to that story. Those countless chapters, bound to repeat. I’m okay with the story growing boring, if I can escape its empty cliches, two-dimensional characters, and meaningless arcs that lead nowhere. I can find nowhere anywhere. That’s always been. I want to go somewhere, admittedly. Just not there. I have the sinking feeling it’s right here. Under an irreparably shattered nose.