11.26.01 - 12:48 p.m.

I am not unique. Somehow, still in the midst of the struggle for self-definition and emerging from the early (golden, brilliant) years and the later (blinding, mindless, troubled) years I am (still not entirely) willing to admit that I am not (particularly) unique, but there it is. So drenched in irony is our culture, so aware, so overloaded with information, that the well-mapped but inevitable journey from adolescence (our extended adolescence. our infinitely extended adolescence) seems at once too trite a journey to be so troubling, and too troubling a journey to be so trite. For those who move smoothly, untroubled by their wastrel selves, unhindered by the few deficiencies they so easily overcome, getting snagged by these minor, unlikely little speedbumps on the great highway of life is incomprehensible.

how can you.

how can you.

how can you.

(how did you.)

get laid so low. why couldn't it be smooth and inevitable, that rise? those mistakes, the same mistakes - wasn't once...

...enough? what strange, willful blindless allowed you to ignore the yawning chasm again and again and again (and still) when you should know better. my god. how could you. how could you. how could you.

the instinct to hide is stoked by the frightening wall yoou build (but it doesn't seem like your handiwork. it seems like the handiwork of another, more skilled hand. inevitably taller than you could have achieved on your own, inevitably more solid. so, maybe you only laid the foundation. perhaps you added the first layer of stone. but incomprehensible, incomprehensible, that you could have allowed it to grow so fucking large.

so this, then, "i needed to find myself" phrase. such a horribly bitter clich�, better suited to a depressingly forumlaic trailer about some hollywood blockbuster than to a fucking life, my fucking life. at least, i needed to dispatch with some illusion and reknit others. i needed to lose the thick and angsty skin for whatever was soft inside, but, yeeesh. i still don't know. so maybe there's some wisdom gained. so maybe there's a fair amount of wisdom gained, but why 1. couldn't i have figured this out so much sooner and 2. why can't the end result be less amorphous and far more definite.

bah.

humbug.