Contagious [Part 3]

I sat in the grass, furious, and in denial. The heat and the hunger were getting to me. So far I had gone almost a week without any food, unless you count the ant that crawled in my mouth while I was sleeping the other night. I started to feel dizzy. Nauseous. Empty. I heard dogs barking. And then all of a sudden darkness became reality, and I wasn't aware any longer.

I started running, faster and faster, until my legs were moving so fast that it became a complex virus that wouldn't be stopped until it was killed over and over again. I was desperate for freedom. Eventually my madness deadened, at least the part of it that was caused by the heat exhaustion, but only after blood dripped out of my nose and down my upper lip. I fell over, hands grasping my stomach, and cried out in pain. Tears came to my eyes as I bit my lip and wiped my nose and mouth with the palm of my sweaty hand. It was crimson; it was the truth.

I lied down on my back, looking up at the sun and resisting the urge to squint. I wanted to go blind. I wanted another reason to want to die.

The heat was becoming a permanent part of me.

I was past the point where you stop caring. I was now at the moment in life when you get yourself ready to accept the other side of things. The life after life after whatever came or didn't come before it. And I was preparing myself earnestly. I was gathering my thoughts, and clutching onto them so tightly so that maybe they would not leave me as I entered Heaven or Hell or joined the dirt and became fertilizer for the next generation's Weeping Willows.

I was ready to gurgle my last words to the only thing that was a constant in my life up until now, and that was fear.

Contagious [Part 2.5]

After following the dusty road, step after lengthened step, I finally came to a ravine. There was a lake that must've been a half of a mile wide. It was U-shaped and lined with trees and reminded me of the summertime back at my home.

I started taking off my clothes so I could jump in and cool down. I unbuttoned my shirt first. The water was so serene, and enticing. The breeze whistled slightly, making small ripples in the glassy facade of the water. I undid the button to my jeans and slid them off.

I waded through the water until it was up to my waist and then dove forward into the crisp aquatic enlightenment. Swimming somewhere in the middle of the lake, I realized that I had forgotten to take off my gold chain that my father had given me when I was a little boy. It had a cross on the end of it with the name "Ivan" encrusted on it vertically.

I held it there in my hand while I thought about all of the things the chain has helped me get through. The time when I slipped on ice and fell on my face and bit clear through my lip. The time I drove home and saw my dog lying in the middle of the road with not an ounce of life left in its body. And then all the times I felt like ending it all, but couldn't because I was afraid. So I just cried.

A tear ran down my face, so I went under the water to get rid of it. There was no crying allowed right now. I needed to find food, and fast.

Contagious [Part 2]

I woke up with my head throbbing; pulsating. It felt as though a horse had realized some mud was stuck on the bottom of his hoof, and he tried to stomp it off. Only I was the mud.

The dry rotted seat inside the bumper car stuck to my sweaty skin as the humid weather seemed to melt me right onto it while I was asleep. I peeled myself off slowly and sat up, pondering what I should do next.

After a few minutes of blankness, I decided that I needed to find water. It had been almost two days since I even felt liquid on my tongue. I was malnutritioned, and my mouth contained less moisture than the Sahara Desert.

I started walking. I passed the broken down ferris wheel, the deserted cotton candy stands, and even the faltering remains of a roller coaster. The wooden structure of the "Thunderous Rage" was only a skeleton of what I imagined it was when it was in service. This was most likely the result of a few million hungry termites.

I left the premises of the abandoned carnival and began to follow an old dirt road to wherever it would lead me. I figured there wasn't any cars driving on the road anymore, but it was a good start towards reaching any sort of civilization. Laying down beside the road was a "Dead End" sign. Ironic, if you ask me.

When I was just five years old, my dad and I went on a road trip. It was a Saturday, and he was a little bit under the influence. A little bit meaning three times over the legal limit. I thought it was funny how he was driving; we were both laughing and having a good time. Until I learned just what a "Dead End" sign meant.

We went over an embankment; the car flipped over and over again until I didn't know which way was up and which way was down. By the time it was all over, I was in the backseat and my dad was somewhere outside the tangled mess of steel and iron.

Needless to say, after the crash, I was still alive. He, however, wasn't.

Contagious [Part 1]

As the rain tumbled down, dancing beyond the silhouettes of the blackened trees, I tried my hardest to not join the puddled mud on the ground. Giving up seemed so easy; so comfortable. Yet, continuing on was the only chance I had at survival. I couldn't give up now.

I bent over, arms resting anxiously on my wavering knees, and puked the remaining contents of my stomach into the foggy landscape below me. I paused for a second, trying to remember whether I had eaten anything black or if I was just puking up pure bile at this point.

There was something about this moment that seemed so familiar, like it had already happened once before. Things like deja vu made me nervously suspicious of superstition. Maybe that's why I always wore two different colored socks. Maybe I was just disorganized.

As I traveled farther, I came across what seemed to be an abandoned Carnival. The dirt covered Merry-Go-Round reminded me of when I was little, and when I wanted to be big like my dad. And when he was my hero and I didn’t know where babies came from.

But that was alright because I knew that we would get ice cream later, and although I knew my dad wouldn’t let me get sprinkles because I always made a mess, I knew that it wasn’t a big deal, but I cried anyway. And then I got sprinkles because he felt bad.

I sat in one of the dusty, rotted seats of a Bumper Car, and closed my eyes. Everything went back to the way it used to be. Innocent, colorful, unaware. Like it was early in the morning on a Saturday, watching cartoons and eating all of the marshmallows right out of the Lucky Charms box.

For a brief second, I could almost hear the television blasting again. The smell of waking up to breakfast. The coldness of my feet as I realized that my socks had somehow disappeared sometime in the duration of my sleep. And then the emptiness returned.

I fell asleep, pretending. Pretending that everything was going to be alright.

Should I Be Less Pessimistic or Should You Be More Realistic?

For example, if I were to say, "The United States economy is only going to get worse until finally the country is in complete shambles" and someone were to reply, "Stop being so pessimistic!", where is the line drawn between pessimistic and realistic?


The truth is that pessimism is an emotion. It's only a choice in that when something bad happens, you can be pessimistic about it, or you can completely ignore reality and be optimistic.


Being optimistic when you know you or everyone else is in a bad place feels dishonest to me. Pessimism allows us to address and deal with issues in life.


And like I said before, pessimism is an emotion. When bad things happen to people, they get sad. They get depressed. And when you're standing at a funeral and half of the people around you are bawling their eyes out, you don't say "Stop being so sad!" Do you?


I do realize that some people can be overly-pessimistic. Some people overreact and blow things out of proportion.


But you have to realize, being realistic is efficient and would help so many people in this world. I know this is a lot more complex than I make it sound, but think of all of the over-weight people in the United States. If some of them came to grips with reality and said "Okay, I need to eat less. I don't really need to eat all of this food." Or some of the people that max out 5 credit cards. If they said "Maybe I don't need to buy these things." Their problems would be solved.


I think pessimism is so discouraged that some people have lost their sense of right and wrong.


And I say it doesn't matter how you look at a glass. If your glass is half full, great, I'm glad, but stop and think next time before you tell someone not to be so pessimistic. You never know how low their glass really is.

Being Distasteful Never Tasted So Good

It started with a one page letter,
so sweet and innocent.
Full of clichés and unbroken promises,
and still I was sure you meant it.
It happens like this every time,
that you make me believe in love.
You make the world seem so unimportant
Besides you, I have nothing else to dream of.

And yet, it fades, every time,
I guess for you, faithfulness gets kind of old.
I don't mean to complain, but I really did love you,
and now I'm dreaming of the lies that you told.
You tell your friends that you never even liked me,
kind of funny how that always works out.
You laugh like it's a joke, but these words are real,
and I hope you realize I'm not someone to doubt.

And here I am, still hoping you'll change,
but hope is blind in so many ways.
This never meant anything to you before,
but I'm lost in your distasteful maze.
When you decide to start caring, just let me know,
I'd love to laugh in your face.
Because I'll never believe in love again,
unless I find someone that won't make me chase.

Have you found God yet?

I grew up in a sort of Christian family. We went to church every week, at least when I was younger (around 5 years old). I remember the repetitiveness of the few hours a week that I spent sitting there doodling on a piece of paper.

Most of the people that went to the church I went to as a young'n were older ladies. They knew they weren't far from finding out what happens after you die. It must be a troubling thing to know that soon you will figure out the truth to the world's greatest mystery, only to understand that you can't bring that knowledge back to 'life'.

I think that fear is what brings most people to Christianity. "Have you found God yet?" is a question that I'm sure many of you have heard before. I have a few sarcastic answers to that one. "Have you found the end of a rainbow yet?" "Have you found the Easter bunny or Santa Claus yet?"

Of course not. It is in my beliefs that Christianity only serves a couple purposes.

1. To keep the people of Earth morally correct.

2. To give Hope to people.

The first one doesn't even work. Look at all of the people that are Christians that are morally corrupt. Just because you "know God", doesn't mean you're not going to sexually molest young children. Just because you "know God", doesn't mean you wouldn't kill a prostitute after you rape her.

And who would forgive people that do that kind of stuff if they only ask for forgiveness? That's not kindness, that's stupidity.

Besides, it's human nature to be immoral. We are all born with an urgency to do wrong, and it's within ourselves that we must choose to do right. Just because you're not religious, doesn't mean you are a BAD person, and just because you don't believe in "God", doesn't mean you won't do GOOD things.

So what do people look for when they pray?

They are asking for help. They want hope that things will get better. I don't believe in Christianity, but I believe in hope. I don't think that we need to ask an imaginary friend for help to have hope, though. It's like doing a "rain dance" to urge the Gods to make it rain.

I don't judge people by their religious beliefs. In fact, I don't really care what a person believes in, because no one knows for certain how the world was made. No one knows for certain if God really exists.

So until we find out, after we're dead and we're fertilizer for the grass above us, I'll keep praying to Hope, not God, and my Bible will continue to be a coaster for my drinks.