THE OTHER SIDE OF PARADISE
Today has been utter shit. Had to contact the police to do a wellness check on my little brother (he's okay). Been feeling sick since Wednesday and I don't know if it's due to the Covid vaccine or the new medications I'm taking or both. Wrote a lengthy entry in my journal about the wall around me... a wall myself and my loved ones built together, brick by brick.
TRICKSTER FIGURE, NAME AND ORIGINS UNKNOWN
I'm realizing that my "normal" self is this troubled trickster figure... a completely unknown individual who keeps telling jokes even when HE KNOWS they're not funny. Overdramatic. Likes to poke fun and pull pranks. Never says what's really on his mind (not in person - not to the ones who "know" me in real life) and only betrays heavy emotion when it works in his favor. Misanthrope. Writer of colorful, surrealist poetry. Torn by the arms in opposite directions - one half jokes compulsively while the other half is losing his mind without the answers to life, the universe and fucking everything else.
Every mental shift I experience is just an extension of the same being, just another face, fragment of self. Is he a god, a demigod? Is he like the watchers of the Books of Enoch? I remember: as a child, my dad always referred to me as his "little imp." Maybe that's the best word for it... it's the word closest to my heart, if nothing else, evoking childhood memories - the good kind.
And my self-concept, the vision of myself I keep locked up inside keeps changing. Some versions last longer than others. Some versions come and go. Nothing is permanent, and perhaps that's the point... I am a shapeshifter, after all.
This evening, I remember the first day of my freshman year of high school. 2007. School was over and I was on the bus, still in the parking lot with my forehead pressed against the grimy window... I noticed someone with hair down to her shoulder blades, hair in deep waves of white and the lightest strawberry, just looking for her bus -
Right now, I see myself as this tall, androgynous figure with HER hair cascading in waves and coils down MY spine... and I'd like to hold onto that, to dig my fingernails into myself until I bleed - but I can't hold onto much of anything. Not my looks. Not my voice. Not my interests... not even my own name. I'm realizing that I don't give a fuck what you call me as long as you say my name with respect.
Whether I manifest as the Joker or as a black-robed skeleton with a dire wolf skull (and an impressive set of antlers) for a face, I am still this... entity. Trickster. Funnyman. Selfish and selfless and manipulative and wearing my heart on my sleeve - but it's driving me fucking crazy because I'm either TOO MANY THINGS or NOTHING AT ALL, and I don't know how to accept that yet.
But I'm trying. I'm trying so fucking hard.
- from "The Vague Diaries"
